Centretown graff

Prank, Hiero, Never — this city needs more alleys. As always, click on the pic to embiggen.

401 Lisgar gets a new porch

Built as single, now a threesie plus a hair salon, this corner was without a house until the late 19th Century. The Polk & Woodburn directory for 1890-'91 lists #401 as "private grounds" while Might 1901 indicates a stable. The latter publisher contradicts himself in 1909 (James J. Campbell, clerk, may or may not have lived there). By 1912, Might lists Patrick O'Connor, no occupation.

Goad confirms sheds and a small stable on the lot as of 1888, possibly associated with an adjoining address on Kent. He shows the present configuration (flat roof, brick on wood, sans second-storey sunroom) on his 1912 reprint.

290 Gloucester Street

This enigmatic block sits just west of the St. Patrick's Basilica campus. From a distance it looks almost shabby — close up it surprises us with a quiet elegance, albeit one so understated, it almost mumbles.

Ornamentation is minimal. The cornice-and-pediment assure us that this indeed an apartment building and not a small textile factory. The foundation is cinder-block, the rest of the exterior is finished in what seem to be faux-sandstone blocks, larger than bricks but smaller than those used in the foundation. "Terracotta" accents are dyed to colour.

I can find no newspaper mentions of this address before 1935. Chris Ryan lists 290 Gloucester as the "Waldemar", however I can only find that name associated with 114 Somerset W. at Cartier (as early as 1925), since demolished.

The Balmoral, The Sandringham

Leafless trees in this photo from November 2015 reveal Homestead's "Balmoral" apartments (99 Range Road, center) as construction nears completion. To the right of the image, the older "Sandringham" (85 Range, Peter Dickinson, completed 1958) overlooks Strathcona Park. The view is, of course, from the east shore of the Rideau River, looking across the water.

Both buildings sit on a terrace of Champlain Sea sediment, in turn surmounting the limestone bedrock of the Eastview Formation. This latter substrate is easily seen (indeed walked across) in mid to late summer, when low water levels expose the Rideau River's rocky bottom. The Sandringham's siting on this plateau adds a certain grandeur to the older building's modest ten storeys.

The conceit here is of two similar towers set side-by-side, both named for British Royal residences — Edward VII's Jacobethan Sandringham House in Norfolk, and the rebuilt (by Prince Albert) baronial castle at Balmoral in Aberdeenshire, Scotland. Posed as if peas from the same royally decreed pod, the two blocks were actually built almost sixty years apart.

I'm not going to argue that the Balmoral is a dreadful piece of infill. Neither its height nor its style are unreasonable. Still, it's a nasty kick in the teeth for anyone who once enjoyed an unobstructed view from the south side of the Sandringham. A screen-grab from an old Google Street View shows the site before work on the Balmoral began — check out that glorious morning sun...

This layout plan gives us an idea of how the present juxtaposition came to be. The "T" arrangement inevitably favours the sight-lines of one building over the other. In this case, the Balmoral is the winner.

Sadly, the Sandringham's space-age "Googie" porte-cochère (left, below) was removed during construction of the Balmoral. I don't think we'll be seeing it again.

[Later] Said swoopy appendage has been replaced with a classical-minimalist concrete affair matching that of the Balmoral. Three cheers for continuity. Underground parking is now accessed via a wide entranceway set between the two buildings, directly north of the Balmoral. The Sandringham's original parking access was via a discreet lane on the north side of the building.

That was then, Ottawa Journal, April 1958.

For anyone wanting a double serving of nostalgia, here's a hand-coloured postcard of Strathcona Park from the early 1900s — this is the original design, looking like an overblown putting range. The view is from the north end of the park looking southeast, with the old isolation hospital (which preceded the Sandringham) catching the evening light in the distance. A round concrete dais still marks the position of the former gazebo, or "summer house" as everyone called it back then. The decorative canals were eventually filled in due to complaints of mosquitoes, foul smells and child drowning risks.

In his 1912 reprint series, Goad devotes a corner of sheet 92 to the isolation hospital. His drawing agrees with the layout indicated in the postcard. The small box-like extension closest to the river was a nurses' residence, joined to the main building by a wooden passageway. Notice how the hospital lay entirely to the north of Templeton Street and faced toward Salisbury Road (now Range Road).

of course, nothing lasts...

Ottawa Journal, September 28 1954

Janeville, 1909-1912

Spent all morning buried up to my neck in the old Peter Hart property just west of Orleans (coming up soon, limestone-related). My eyes were bugging out of my head, so I did this to change things up. Yeah, right.

Didn't realize I had these Janeville maps in my Goad folder, thought I'd try to merge them just for the halibut. Had to shrink sheet 164 to make it match up with 165, but the results aren't too shabby, at least not compared to what someone with scissors and glue did to #165 over 100 years ago.

In 1908, the communities of Janeville, Clarkstown and Clandeboye were joined to form the village of Eastview. In 1913, Eastview (now Vanier) was incorporated as a town, so we shouldn't be surprised to find the names "Janeville" and "Eastview" coexisting in this little patchwork.

Speaking of "little", I think you'll find that if you click on the image, then right-click to "view image" and then use the magnifying cursor to enlarge that... Blogger will actually let you see an almost usefully large version. Which you can use in your own research.

I'd say all sorts of clever things about stuff on the map but I'm just getting over my second case of flu this winter (fuck you, fucking "flu shot" — take those quotes and put them "you know where") and if I talk any more I'll have a coughing fit and give myself a hernia. You know where.

more old Sparks

(taken from "Old Time Stuff", a semi-regular Ottawa Citizen curation of stories about the Capital in the 19th Century.)

Sparks St. Stores Erected on Stilts

published Friday, July 29 1938

  Few of us who live in Ottawa today realize the conditions which  prevailed in the old town nearly a century ago. Describing Sparks street as she knew it back in the early [eighteen] fifties, Mrs. B. Demarais, Ottawa centenarian, said.

  "In those days Queen Street, which has since been filled in by many feet, was low, and stores on the south side of Sparks street stood up at the rear on great stilts.

  "The topography of Sparks street has been completely changed since those days. In the fifties, the late Johnston brown had a private residence on the southwest corner of Bank and Sparks street. Across the road, where the Sun Life building now is, was Leon Dawson's harness shop. Where the Booth building now stands was Timothy Rajotte's block of stores. I remember the rent of a fine Sparks street store per month in those days was only about ten dollars.

  "Across the road from the Rajotte block was George Wilson's carriage shop and nearby, nearer Zeller's present store was Titus' carriage shop. Just east of Bryson-Graham's present stand [see previous post] and over some stores was Miss Trotter's boarding house. I worked there for a while and I remember that two of her most prominent boarders were the late D'Arcy McGee and the late J. M. Currier.

  "Almost across the road at the northeast corner of Sparks and O'Connor, the late James Lang was building a block. Thos. Borbridge's clothing store was also near the site of Bryson-Graham's.

  "On the present site of The Citizen building was a hotel kept by the late Richard Bishop, who was paymaster for the old Ottawa Field Battery. The military boys of that day made his hotel their headquarters. Farther up, between Metcalfe and Elgin, was Johnathan Offord's shoe store. He was a great Methodist, and I believe a tablet was erected in the basement of the Dominion Methodist church reciting his services to Methodism."

An earnest young man was he, didn't make it to forty-three.

Alright, I know some of that was a tad dessicated. A tablet erected in a basement? Yikes! At least now I know that Thomas D'Arcy McGee was shot next to Sharry's.

You've got to admit though, that editor knew how to grab your attention. "Sparks St. Stores Erected on Stilts"!  "In those days Queen Street, which has since been filled in by many feet, was low, and stores on the south side of Sparks street stood up at the rear on great stilts." Think about that the next time you walk the length of the Hardy Arcade from Sparks Street down to Queen.

comings and goings at Sparks and O'Connor

The Ottawa Journal, May 13 1924

When I was about ten, my mother opined that I "really should" learn to play tennis so that I could "meet the right people". Sometimes I wonder if she read P. G. Wodehouse without getting the whole business about twits (Wodehouse himself dismissed tennis as "outdoor Ping-Pong"). No matter. The tennis player above serves (haha!) to bring up the subject of Bryson-Graham Limited.

Bryson-Graham occupied the SE corner of O'Connor and Sparks, and a warren of adjoining properties. They operated between 1880 and 1953. Urbsite has assembled a comprehensive history of the business here. A directory listing from when they were doing gangbusters reads like this...

The Ottawa City Directory, Might 1923

William James Topley, April 1892, LAC MIKAN no. 3318414

"Sharry's" in situ, unknown photographer, circa 1970

Bryson-Graham was a bit before my time. I do remember Sharry's restaurant though, later Yesterday's and now Nate's. Sharry's opened in June of 1954. You can read a discussion of the 55-year Sharry's/Yesterday's tenure in a CBC story, here.

An announcement in the Ottawa Journal (June 15 1954) begins...

Something exiting and new has happened to Ottawa — at the old Bryson-Graham corner, Sparks and O'Connor. It's another step toward the beautification of our National Capital.

Sharry's new restaurant now occupies the corner, inviting one and all to come and enjoy tempting meals in a luxurious, colorful atmosphere.

The restaurant is under the ownership and management of Saul and Joe Ages, and Murray Macy, three well-known Ottawa businessmen, who have toured the Continent for different ideas and modern treatment... 

The remainder of the article is striking for the many lines devoted to seating, (155 over two dining areas) atmosphere, and decor (which included a pair of rather startling "3D" mountainscape murals by Basil Armstrong*). There's a near total lack of menu information, save a passing mention of bread and pastries. And for God's sake don't ask about wine, they'll think you're from France. In 1954, any new restaurant in Ottawa was a big story — and you ate what you were served, sober.

Regarding those murals, I remember them well. For a small child, they were at least half the fun of going to Sharry's. I don't know what happened to them but I expect they were painted over. In the 1950s and 60s, you could smoke in restaurants and those walls surely took a beating. Mr. Armstrong's work might have been rated gaudy or tacky by today's standards, but they'd be the highlight of any irony-laden retro bar. As it was, the Journal article took pains to mention that Armstrong was from London, England, presumably better than any artist Canada could come up with. Back then most of us were not yet familiar with the work of Tom Thompson and Lawren Harris, both of whom are now known to have painted mountains and that sort of thing.

I find no visual record of Armstrong's work, but I did locate a brief written account of the man. In her autobiographical Life Before Stratford, Canadian actress Amelia Hall remembers Basil Armstrong working as a set painter for the Ottawa Little Theatre...

Life Before Stratford, Amelia Wells Hall, 1989, Dundurn Press, Toronto

And now you know what an artist looked like back in the day. The four movies mentioned were all British, produced between 1944 and '46. And c'mon — David Lean? Laurence Olivier? The shizz of it all man, the shizz...

2015: Dominion Arboretum

My research associate Kay-El climbs the Ardeth Wood memorial Bebb's oak at the Dominion Arboretum, August 2015. We collected (and then planted) roughly 1,000 acorns and other tree seeds from that visit. Hey, it was either us or the squirrels.

See "Ardeth Wood's Brother Wants to Clone the Majestic Oak Named in Her Honour After Violent Storm" by Joanne Laucius, Ottawa Citizen, September 29 2017.

The Bebb's is a naturally occurring hybrid of the bur and white oak. The Arboretum was established in 1889. This specimen is reported to have been transplanted there circa 1897-98.

2015: March snow-squall to the northeast

as viewed from the southern tip of the Golden Triangle, afternoon sun

The concrete block to the left of center, middle distant, is the brutalist-style, 11-storey Chateau Cartier at 60 Mcleod, built in 1976 by Don Mills-based Deltan Realty.

Ottawa Journal, October 20 1976

The site was originally that of a 2-storey brick public school facing onto Cartier at #115. Sod-turning for the "Cartier Street School" was announced in late May 1905. The school stood until at least 1965 (aerial photos). Prior to domestic construction, the area was a rail and lumber yard.

Cartier Street Public School, 1965

2015: ghost door, 350 Elgin Street

This brick wall with its filled in doorway is the rear wall of 350 Elgin and faces onto Jack Purcell Lane at the corner of Waverley. The present structure replaced the smaller, wooden original, listed as a grocery store in 1888 (Goad). For many years this was the home of Stevenson's Drug Store.

From the Ottawa Journal, May 29 1953, on the occasion of a major refurbishment...

Stevenson's Drug Store, one of Ottawa's oldest and finest centre-town pharmacies, is completing the largest modernizing job in its long history.

Originally established in 1899 by Samuel J. Stevenson, a graduate of the Ontario College of Pharmacy in 1897, it was first situated on the north-west corner of Elgin at Waverley [lately Boushey's grocery store]. A few years later it moved across Waverley Street to its present location on the south-west corner....

Upon the death of Mr. Stevenson in December 1945, the business was carried on by his son Nelson...

After the Stevenson business vacated the premises, 350 Elgin was briefly the home of an ill-fated attempt by the Boushey family to operate a health food and supplement shop. It's now occupied by Pure Gelato, which seems to be doing well there.

Not too shabby for a brick wall.

2015: stone jetty, Squaw Bay, Val Tetreau Gatineau

Watch out for killer beavers. You can't see them but they're there, waiting to chomp you in the femoral artery so you can bleed out like on CSI.

2015: Wish you were here

Cummings Island sits just upstream from the Cummings Bridge, in the middle of the Rideau River. You can see the Place Vanier office towers in the background to the left (eastern shore).

Below, a shot of the river's western shore features the old stone NW abutment/ retaining wall in the foreground.

adapted from Charles Goad, Ottawa Volume 1 sheet 84, 1912

Originally, the bridge crossed the Rideau River in two spans, landing on the north end of the island at the squared-off retaining wall (extant, closest to the viewer in the top photo). Houses in the area shaded green were demolished some time after 1965 to create a small park. The recently refurbished Besserer Park is a great spot for watching the sun rise in summer.

2015: Elgin Street

(eventually repaired)

that layer-cake infographic

I've come across this image on a handful of websites that discuss local geology but I don't know who the artist is. All I can say, kudos on the funky drawing. Oh, and my research associate Kay-El says "That bottom layer is a gneiss shade of pink." Ha ha.

The simplest but most important idea here is that for the most part, geology and geologic time is a bottom-up affair. In a given setting (like Ottawa, shown here) the oldest rocks are on the bottom and newer rock forms in layers ("strata") on top of the old.* So the right hand image is telling us that the rock coloured in shades of pink is older than the yellow stuff on top of it and blue stuff is younger still. And no, the rocks aren't necessarily those colours. Although sometimes they are.

The column on the left breaks geologic time into sections with the oldest time periods at the bottom and, once again, the newer stuff above it. Geologic time is broken down into a system whereby Eons beget Eras beget Periods beget Epochs beget Ages, all with colourfully weird names, none of which you really need to learn unless you're geologist, in which case, be ready to recite all of them in your sleep, along with their associated dates. The rest of us can just Google them if we get stuck.

One of the rather gob-smacking take-aways from the left column is just how old all of this is. The figures running down the left side of the left column are millions of years. So where part of the brown section is labeled "Jurassic" — a name that should ring a bell — the graphic is saying that the Jurassic Period began some 208 million years ago (MYA) and lasted until about 140 MYA (some sources specify 144 MYA, but what's 4 million years between friends). So at the bottom of the chart, Archean rocks date back to at least 4,500 million years (I know, my head hurts too), while at the top of the column, the Holocene is dated in thousands of years and includes woolly mammoths, saber-tooth tigers and Fred Flintstone.

But here's the weird thing, and this is where all those arrows come in. If you go boring into Ottawa bedrock, you aren't going to find all those different layers from all those different time periods. In fact, you're only going rock from two specific time frames.  The bottom stuff (in pink) comes from the Proterozoic Eon, the more recent part of the Precambrian Supereon**, back when life on Earth, in the spots where life did exist, took the form of slime, gunk and blobs. Rocks from this time period have since been heated and crushed and smooshed to become "metamorphic" —  stuff like granite and marble (and yes, gneiss). We don't encounter much of this kind of rock in our area unless we dig really deep, or visit the Gatineau Hills, where it literally sticks out of the ground. Hence hills.

After this, the chart indicates a gap where the upper parts of the Proterozoic, and most of the Cambrian stuff above it (in our area at least) got worn down and washed away by erosion. Ottawa's upper layer, the "yellow" stuff, was laid down during the Ordovician Period. Sedimentary rocks from the Ordovician are younger than the stuff beneath them, but they're still pretty old. During the Ordovician we didn't even have land animals yet, let alone dinosaurs. Ordovician animals were things like trilobites and corals and sea-lilies and brachiopods (sort of like clams) and nautiloids (like this guy...)

...and then it got cold and a lot of stuff died. Thus ended the Ordovician.

Then the chart shows another really big gap until you get to the blue-coloured Holocene layer on top. This means that the blue stuff is a lot younger than limestones and shales and sandstone. In fact, it's so young it hasn't even turned into stone yet — geologists say it's "unconsolidated", which has twice as many syllables as "not rock yet". It's a bit hard to read on the drawing but this top layer consists of clay (from when we were at the bottom of the Champlain Sea) and "till", which is stuff dumped here by glaciers during the last Ice Age. In some places there's also sand, where it was pushed into sandbars by the proto-Ottawa River, when it was still a lot deeper than it is today.

One more thing. On the right-hand side there's line where it says "Fault".  Now I don't know whose fault it is and maybe it's no-one's fault in particular. But it does indicate that cracks sometimes form in the bedrock and layers shift so they don't line up properly any more. It doesn't mean you were bad, it just means that daddy's going to be living at motel for a while and like everything else in life, it's something we can all learn from.

*Unless they get tilted or flipped. Learn how to carry a tray.
**Internet Coupons valid through December 31 2018.

Limestone 2: Rocks and Minerals

Rocks and Minerals, Golden Press 1957

Locally quarried limestone figured in the building of some of Ottawa's earliest stone buildings.
The Ottawa Locks and associated structures (including the now Bytown Museum) were built from rocks quarried on site. Indeed, a sizeable gouge was removed from what is now the SW corner of Major's Hill Park — this had to be back-filled before the park could be landscaped.

Until about 1910, most Ottawa houses were built on rough-faced limestone foundations. Many such buildings can still be seen in Sandy Hill and Centretown. Limestone was also cooked ("burned") in kilns as feed-stock for plaster, mortar, white-wash, soil conditioner, and eventually the concrete that would replace stone in construction.

the Road to Hell is — oh wait a sec

Ottawa Journal, March 30 1972

For me back in '72,  "reading the papers" meant checking the funnies and the horoscope, so I missed this one the first time around. An eleven block mall on Bank Street? My first reaction here is to wonder who those NCC guys were scoring their microdot from. I'll bet it was that guy with the french-cut who used to work Confederation Square.*

On closer reading, I realize that this "mall" thing was a proposal to narrow Bank from four lanes to two and emphasise public transit. Aren't we kind of halfway there already?

*You know the guy — skinny, poor-boy tees, flares, ratty little moustache.  You'd walk by him and he be like "haaassshhhhh", so quitely that you weren't even sure you'd heard him.

I feel a show-tune coming on

As featured in A.S. Woodburn's The Ottawa Directory, 1888-89

Horse* not included. The factory started as a carriage painting shop and was eventually taken over by the Davidson & Thackray wood planing and turning mill. This latter, thriving operation straddled the block, facing onto both Queen and Sparks — it was destroyed by fire on June 4 1903.

Sparks/Bank/Queen/Kent rose from its ashes as an office and commercial block which included the Hotel Cecil and the Dominion Vaudeville Theatre.

The entire block was demolished to make way for the C.D. Howe Building (240 Sparks), completed in 1977. The original carriage shop stood on what is now the C.D. Howe's southern entrance plaza, just east of the block's mid-line.

The vehicle depicted conforms to the description of a "Surrey cart", a design said to have originated in Surrey, England. This model even has a fringe on the top. Oh dear.


* In the song, cowboy Curly McLain tells his sweetheart Miss Laury that he'll take her to the box social in a Surrey pulled by "a team of snow white horses". I don't know if Surreys came in larger sizes but I think that more than one horse pulling a delicate rig like this would be overkill, if not dangerous. We're reminded of Leyland Palmer in Twin Peaks (Ep. 15), singing "Surrey" while driving his convertible at reckless speed.

Centretown's favourite elf

Ottawa Journal, September 22 1966

apartment hunting in Ottawa, spring 1818

The Emigrant's Welcome to Canada, Robert Cruikshank, circa 1820

An ill-prepared London dandy is greeted by one of our own. Cruikshank may not have known which way snowshoes should point, but he's certainly skewered his young fop, who has packed not only bear grease (proto-Brylcreem), but silk stockings, dancing pumps and (multiple!) "beauty spot punches".

Settlement of the Ottawa area had already begun when the artist completed this cartoon — Philemon Wright landed in Hull, 1800, and Bradish Billings set up camp in Gloucester, 1812. The Town Clerk's census for 1822 listed all of 37 'Men Heads of Families' with 191 persons in total. The assessment roll noted 303 acres under cultivation, three houses of dressed timber, four frame houses under two storeys, two merchant shops and a sawmill (source). Construction of the Rideau Canal would begin some four years after that.

code name "Onyx"...

287 Lisgar, a Dalek brandishes its sword

...finally rising into the air after a decade of back-and-forth about (what else but) height. The initial proposal by (who else but) Claridge was for a 16-floor, 136 unit condo. That figure quickly nudged up to 18 floors, then was hammered back down to 16. In early 2014, a 27-floor design appeared in the Ottawa Citizen but at last word, the height will be 16 floors. Either that or 27.

Construction began a year ago and has reached the thirteenth ("14th"?) floor. Claridge has been close-fisted with details, but appears to be calling the project "Onyx" and is inviting inquiries.

The late Douglas Hardie (Ottawa) was the original architect for this project. Neuf (Montreal) whose name is postered on the site hoarding, seems to have assumed that duty.

The building replaces a charming but sadly neglected walk-up apartment building, Werner Noffke's 1938 "Gilbert Apartments". Chris Ryan has written about the Gilbert here.

This shot from April 2014 managed to make the Gilbert look even worse than it really did at the time. Your welcome.

pretty vacant

Demolition at the corner of Bank Street and Lisgar reveals the back-ends of an old 4-row, an all-brick structure originally surrounded by brick-on-wood houses and storefronts. A battered sign suggests what we can expect to see on the corner at some point in the future.

 The plan below, (adapted from Goad, 1912) shows the original buildings on the west end of the block — pink for brick, yellow for wood. Out-buildings, mostly of wood, are shown in grey.

The anticipated building is to be known as Joyce House, Dreesen Cardinal Architects. View a project gallery here, heritage considerations are discussed here.

portrait: The Kenwood

115 O'Connor, March 2018

From the Ottawa Journal, October 1 1927…

Comfort, labor-saving, and artistic decoration are the keynotes of the new Kenwood Apartments which are ready for occupation today. Not the least important features of this new building is its convenient location — on the corner of O’Connor and Gloucester streets [155 O’Connor] — central for the residential district, shops, theatres, etc. The block consists of seventeen apartments varying in size to suit the desire of the individual tenants…

Cecil Burgess was the architect — see a biography here.

portrait: 266 Nepean

This little wooden house was built no later than 1888, at which time it was the home of William Hearl, a teamster. Woodburn lists him both as a boarder and the primary resident.

A teamster, in modern American English, is a truck driver, or a member of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, a labor union in the United States and Canada. Originally, the term "teamster" referred to a person who drove a team of draft animals, usually a wagon drawn by oxen, horses, or mules.

portrait: 252 Lisgar

The Woodburn Directories suggest a construction date between 1888 and 1890. Dr. Mark G. McElhinney, a dentist, was one of, if not the first resident. Aerial photos show that #252's tall neighbour arrived in the early 60s.

Dr. McElhinney was an avid motoring and sailing enthusiast — his name often appeared in print in that connexion.

Ottawa Journal, May 5 1913

By the time this article appeared, Dr. McElhinney was living and working at 109 Metcalfe. Emmeline McElhinney, widow of (son?) Mark P., continued to reside at the Lisgar Street house.

slow fail

somewhere in Centretown, April 2018

Oh dear.

portrait: 455 Lisgar

Centretown Citizens Ottawa Corporation, April 2018

limestone 1: colossal contours

Draw a line from Andy Haydon Park on the Ottawa River, south to Brockville on the St. Lawrence, and pretty much all of Ontario east thereof sits on sedimentary bedrock, much of it limestone. Kingston may style itself the "Limestone City"*, but Ottawa is no slouch when it comes to great massive hunks of calcium carbonate** rock sticking out of the ground. From the city core westward, Parliament Hill, Nanny Goat and Cathedral Hills, the Chaudiere and Lemieux island groups (the latter with its associated Squaw Bay on the Quebec side and Lazy Bay here in Ontario, all offer spectacular views of great grey cliffs and stony outcrops. Lebreton Flats is itself a great limestone plain.

For sheer unrelieved scale however, the great limestone mass just east of Vanier is the real jawdropper — and maybe "east of Vanier" is cutting things close. Consider this top map detail from 1906. Elevations are in feet above sea level, click on the map to view full size.

(adapted from) Department of Militia and Defense - 1906

Notice Beechwood and Notre Dame Cemeteries to the lower left. Both are bounded on the east by St. Laurent Bouldevard — but what's with the the kinky bit jutting into Notre Dame? Long before St. Laurent was a boulevard it was a dirt track laid down to follow a 19th century surveyors base-line. Except that dirt track had to make a detour around a hill of rock. That hill was the western end of the the limestone behemoth*** that dominates this map. A straight and proper roadbed wasn't cut through the rock until the 1950s, when the development of Manor Park, Rockcliffe Air Base and Rockledge Terrace made the kinky little road look inadequate and out of date.

1965 — Quarry, St. Laurent at Brittany Dr., with two new apartment towers, path of old road still visible

You can see a little quarry at the north end of the kink. It has since been filled with apartment towers. If you track to the right, you'll soon arrive at another road. Only the south end of Lang's Road remains today. It too sports a little kink, skirting another limestone outcrop. That's what you get for putting roads on property lines. It's not marked on this map, but Lang's Quarry, just north of Montreal Road, still sits within that crook and is worth a visit.

2011 — Lang's Quarry, Road, curve crowding Montfort Hospital parking

Up we climb, along Montreal Road to Carson's Road and the aptly named Quarries neighbourhood. Just look at all the quarries, again, now filled in, their former site marked by row-houses and apartment towers. Back in the 1800s, this settlement was called Rock Village. Can you guess what people did for a living there?

Eastward ho, past Skead Road (now Blair) we climb some more, hitting an elevation just over 350 feet (about 107 metres). A small quarry was dug here some time after 1928, on the "first level" of Rothwell Heights. It's now a park, "Quarry Park", encircled by Davidson Crescent.

From this point onward, Montreal Road dips downward to Green's Creek on the right side of the map. It does climb again on the other side, toward Blackburn Hamlet and Orleans— but I think that's enough limestone for one day.

*Anyways, Kingston is west of Brockville, so why  am I even mentioning it?
** Limestone has to be at least 50% CaCO3 or else they call it something else. Hey, you've gotta draw the line somewhere.
*** Somehow this elongated mass reminds me of Anne Elk (Miss) and her theory. You know the one.

aerial imagery via geoOttawa