Philomène in Mourning

Not my photo, as you probably guessed, but William Topley's, and my interest here is less funereal than architectural. We'll get to the latter after a respectful nod to the former.

The scene depicts the "Funeral Procession of Col. Vidal" and is credited, without date, to the Topley Studio. "The Colonel", by then Brigadier General Beaufort Henry Vidal, died after a protracted bout of nephritis, on the afternoon of Monday, March 2, 1908. He had been promoted, only a year previous, to the position of Inspector General of the Canadian Milita. The Dictionary of Canadian History hosts an article about  B.H. Vidal here.

Vidal's funeral was held on the morning of Thursday, March 5, at St. Joseph's Roman Catholic Church at 174 Wilbrod — a march of not quite a kilometer from his home on Daly Avenue — this on what seems to have been the start of a fine day.

Indeed, anyone who knows Sandy Hill, or Ottawa, or late winter for that matter, will recognize the angle and the strength of sun that morning, eager to melt one of the last heavy snowfalls of the season. The Vidals (B.H. was survived by his second wife, Beatrice — née Taschereau) lived at 363 Daly, part of Philomène Terrace, the row of stone houses that appears in the background above. #363 is at the left of the photo, on the western end of the row.

The angle of the photograph suggests that Mr. Topley positioned himself on the front porch (or perhaps the balcony) of #356 Daly across the street, as the procession assembled. Neither the small porch nor the balcony were enclosed. It would have been chilly there, standing in the shade, camera at the ready. A tripod would have helped him keep his hands warm and lent the proper gravitas. Topley chose his lookout well — as the mourners fell into stride, he captured this shot, nicely composed on the diagonal and without undue obstruction, solemn yet (dare we admit?) invigorating — the sun bright, horsing snorting in the air fresh and snow crunching underfoot. I don't think they salted back then.

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Before Sandy Hill was a neighborhood, it was a hill and a sandy one at that, at least for the first few feet down — trust me, I dug a hole. As a landscape feature, the hill extended north of Rideau Street into the eastern part of what is now (otherwise) "Lowertown". Early references to Sandy Hill can confuse when, for example, we read that Bytown's first cemetery was moved (nominally) from the southeastern flank of Barracks Hill (now just across Elgin from the NAC) to "Sandy Hill". A cemetery in Sandy Hill? I had no idea. Well there was one (and believe me, a lot of the bones are still there) but not in the Sandy Hill you're thinking of. That old burying ground lay north of Rideau, within a nine-acre plot now styled "MacDonald Gardens Park" — perhaps not on our mental map of the neighborhood, but geologically still part of the Hill.

Of course, by the time of B.H. Vidal's passing, Sandy Hill was very much a neighborhood and a prestigious one at that. Development had begun to creep southward from Laurier East — "Theodore", they called it then — into the valley toward Somerset, but the section north of Laurier was (in deference to Vidal's military background) well-entrenched. And posh. Once a windy sand-barren worked by market-gardening squatters, Sandy Hill circa 1908 boast some of the most ambitious homes — mansions, let face it — Ottawa had ever seen.

This brings us to Philomène Terrace — not a mansion, but a series of eight row-houses, townhouses on the edge of town. Sandy Hill History writes...

This impressive eight unit stone row at 363-383 Daly Ave. was built in 1874 by Honoré Robillard in the Norman style, a style more reminiscent of buildings in old Québec City and Montreal than Ottawa. It is one of only a handful of stone houses to have been built in Sandy Hill. A stone mason, the son of a stone mason (his father Antoine had been involved in the construction of the Rideau Canal and Notre Dame Basilica), Robillard was also a businessman and politician.

Philomène Terrace stands out for its two-foot thick stone walls, its classical symmetry, its stone gables and multiple chimneys. Inside, these houses feature open curving staircases, high ceilings, plaster rosettes and crown mouldings, high baseboards and ornate radiators. The servants’ quarters and the kitchen were originally in the basement and were accessible through a back staircase. The front verandas and the rear additions were built in the 1880s.

Robillard named the row after his first wife Philomène who died in 1879 in an accident at the age of 39, after having borne him 7 or 9 children (the records disagree). Robillard remarried but did not have children with his second wife...

You had me at "ornate radiators".

Here's a Goad map for a bit of visual relief.

Ottawa Ont., Vol. 1, May 1912 reprint, Sheet 24 (detail)

This is the Terrace in context, some four years after the Colonel died. The blue fill indicates all-stone construction — the red of the rear additions signifies all-brick build, while the single-storey sheds, coloured grey are made of wood. Notice the many small wooden (yellow) and brick veneer homes sharing block 114 with the Terrace — a "posh" neighborhood perhaps, but of mixed-income nonetheless.

As for Robillard, he did a fair bit of quarrying in Gloucester Township. This activity included digs at limestone tracts along "The Montreal Road" —  details will be forthcoming. Maybe we can pinpoint the source of that Philomène Terrace masonry.

the Odd Couple

281-283 Bay Street —  and I'm guessing separate ownership.

Goad (1912) shows us brick-on-wood construction. An all-wood 6-row once stood immediately to the north. With its lawn setback, 281-283 would have seemed swank by comparison. Might suggests construction some time between 1901 and 1909.

Crowded House

March 1961, Ottawa Journal

Fifteen years after WWII had ended, Ottawa housing boom was still in full swing, with a strong emphasis on single-family homes, built in suburbs that spread ever-further from the city core. This newspaper ad shared space with a three-quarter page spread lauding Bill Teron's then partly-built Lynwood Village in the city's rapidly growing west end.

The Sunburst Building

I only recently noticed this yellow-brick building on the corner of Bank and Slater — here's a photo to make up for lost time.

I shouldn't be surprised that Urbsite has already written about the "Sunburst" (March 2013) — he's always on top of the cool stuff. Check out his detailed, article here, with some great old photos (old cars, streetcar tracks, snow!). He tells us that "The building at 129-131 Bank Street appears to have been built ca.1910 for the Matthews-Laird Co., meat suppliers, with two floors of offices and workshops to rent above."

The why-when-and-who of the Sunburst name remains unclear, though I wonder if someone was inspired by the striking design of the lintels capping the windows under the roof-line. Urbsite writes "The lintels that comprise keystones in a row of voussoir stones mimic the structure of an arch flattened out into a straight line - which although only a decorative device is visually unsettling if you think about how an arch is supposed to work."

The effect does remind one of the sun's rays, stretching past the horizon. The sunburst was a popular Art Deco motif.

"Biba" Sunburst logo, late 60s Deco Revival

Goad (1912) confirms brick construction. The block was already densely built-upon by the time the Sunburst was constructed. It replaced a pair of wooden, single-storey storefronts, the original 129 and 131 Bank.

Assuming that the 1909 Might Directory was compiled over the previous year, this clipping could push the build-date back to as early as 1908.

Mr. Matthews had a colourful selection of tenants!
After a bit more digging I found this...

The photo is attributed to Ottawa photographer William James Topley with a date of April 1906. Note the "Railway and Commercial Telegraph School" on the second floor. Topley's photo shows off those "voussoirs" to good effect. If the date is correct, it pushes the Sunburst's build date even further into the past.

Sheet Metal Trim

from Polk & Woodburn's City Directory, 1890-91

292 Kent Street

Lately Kars Confectionary, #292 is one of four identical houses built on the west side of Kent in the late 1880s, between Somerset and Cooper. All four sport the same gable cladding (stamped metal?) and the same brickwork. The ground-floors of all four have been converted for business use — a thrift shop, multiple offices, and a Thai restaurant. We'll see what happens to this one.

According to the Polk & Woodburn Directory (1890-91), 292's first occupant was Stephen S. Thorne, a money-order clerk.

I felt that.

Canadian Department Stores Ltd., July 4 1927

This ad was part of a half-page spread which described (this particular?) CDSL as "successors  to "A.A. Fournier, Limited Store No. 12".

While that detail may well contribute to the jigsaw puzzle that is the history of Canadian retail, what I find striking is that fact that this and so many early newspaper ads of this ilk and era don't bother to include a business address. Apparently, one just knew these things. Of course, when this appeared in the Ottawa Citizen, one could traverse the entirety of Ottawa's retail district in little over half an hour, so the store would have been that much harder to miss.

Cloche (bell-shaped) hats, of which some variants are included above, were invented (we are told) in 1908 by French milliner Caroline Reboux, as a rebuke to the overly-wide hat-brims of that decade. Their popularity persisted well into the 1930s.

I'm not sure what to call that intimidating Deco-on-the-Nile affair to the upper left and I don't know if Ottawa was ever actually ready for that sort of thing.

480 MacLaren

#480 was one of the last houses to be built on this block. The Might Directories narrow the date of construction to between 1901 and 1909. Goad seems to confirm that it went up after 1898, and his 1912 reprint depicts it as a two-and-a-half storey brick-on-wood build.

The asymmetry may be a Victorian hold-over, but the heavy-set appearance is Edwardian.  On the first and second floors, fussy ornamentation has given way to sills and lintels that run in bands across multiple windows, while the third-storey brickwork is worth stopping and pointing at.

Might 1909 lists the likely first occupant as "Jones, Louis K., Secretary Department Railways and Canals", eventually Assistant Deputy Minister of the same.

Eat Me

ad placement, Ottawa Directory 1888-89, A.S. Woodburn, 36 Elgin Street

Bay Street Trio, North of Somerset

This would have been a quartet but for the fact that #314 had a car parked out front. That leaves us with (from north to south) 310 Bay, corner of Cooper, of the ochre door and austere grey trim...

312 Bay, with the pillared porch and smart little balcony...

and #316, waxing fancy with the bargeboard and the brickwork.

423-425 McLeod

The northeast corner of Kent and McLeod — it'll be a shame to see that Boston Ivy go.

I took a walk down to the LCBO at Bank and McLeod this afternoon, and was paying for my bottle of Pelee Island Pinot when my nose decided to bleed. I left the store with what grace I could muster and ducked west along McLeod to avoid the staring crowds —  which is how I came across this duplex.

Now I don't know what everyone else calls a pair of houses thus-conjoined, but my father, who sold concrete to the major developers of his day, and my mother, who worked for Campeau, would have both said "duplex" and that's what I'm saying too. You can go on saying "double" if you like.

The City of Ottawa sign gives us the heads-up that someone plans to build a four-storey residential block on this site, a project that would include the old houses at 443 and 447 Kent, directly behind this lot. The proposal has not been well-received.

I'm having trouble reconciling Goad and the City Directories to arrive at a construction date. The official heritage assessment is similarly vague (source)...

The following was extracted from the Heritage Survey and Evaluation Form produced by Julian Smith during his review in 1996 (with a few updated notes):  423-425 McLeod Street (constructed 1879-1901): 2 storey, flat-roofed, double residence with decorative brick veneer, decorative wood porches and cornice. Vernacular Italianate style building largely retaining its heritage integrity. Very good example of turn of the century residential design.

And there you somewhat have it. My nosebleed stopped after about five minutes, the wine was a bit sweet but it did the job.

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".

function, form.

This is a swoosh-box, stationed outside the entrance of 300 Slater, the north tower of the Jean Edmonds Building, formerly the Journal Towers, home to the Ottawa Journal until 1980. The Journal was founded in 1885 by A.S Woodburn, who for a time also published the Woodburn Ottawa Directories, those now-endlessly valuable historical research tomes.

Not only do swoosh-boxes signal their function by their curious shape, this exemplar enforces the local asymmetry in a designated "No Symmetry Zone" (6:00 hrs to 18:00 hrs), one of a handful in the downtown core.

Appearing soon at the Russell

"The Divine Sarah", W.D. Downey, London, date vague yet effective

In Saturday's Ottawa Evening Journal (December 2 1905) we read...

With no sign of diminishing powers (if the enthusiastic acclaim of her critics is to be considered) Mme. Sarah Bernhardt continues to progress, with astonishing success upon her farewell American tour, which is given under the direction of S.S. and Lee Shubert and W.F. Connor, of New York. She will reach this city on Wednesday morning and her appearance will unquestionably constitute the principal dramatic event of the season. Her engagement will be played at the Russell Theatre and will include two of her greatest plays, "Adrienne Lecouvreur" and "Camilla."

At an age when most theatrical celebrities are thinking of retiring, this wonderful woman still sways her audience as in the days of her youth. Her history is a romance. She was born in Paris in 1847 [The currently accepted date is 22 or 23 October 1844. She was born out of wedlock, the daughter of a young businessman from a wealthy French family and a Dutch-Jewish courtesan.] . Her father, after having her baptized, placed her in a convent; but she had already secretly determined to be an actress. In her course of study at the conservatory she so distinguished herself that she received a prize which entitled her to a debut at the Theatre Francais. She selected the part of Iphigenie, in which she appeared on the 11th August, 1862, and at least one newspaper drew special attention to her performance, describing her as "pretty and elegant" and particularly praising her perfect enunciation. She afterward played other parts at the Theatre Francais, but soon thereafter transferred herself from that house to the Gymnase.

The director of the Gymnase did not take too seriously a view of this new actress. Nor did her acting make any great impression at the Gymnase. At this theatre she lost no time in exhibiting that independance to which she owes something of her celebrity. The day after the first representation of a piece by [Eugène] Labiche, "Un mari qui lance sa femme," in which she had undertaken an important part, she stealthily quitted Paris.

After a tour of Spain, Sarah returned to Paris and appeared at the Odeon, where she created a number of characters in such plays as "Les Arrets," "Le drame de la rue de la Paix," "Le Batard," but chiefly distinguished herself in "Ruy Blas" and in a translation of "King Lear." At the end of 1872, she appeared at the Comedie Francaise, and with such distinction that she was retained first as pensionnaire, and afterwards as Societaire.

In 1880 Emile Augier's comedy "L'Aventuriere" was revived at the Comedie Francaise, and the author confided the part of Clorinda to Sarah Bernhardt. After the first representation, however, she was so enraged by an uncomplimentary newspaper criticism that she sent in her resignation to M. Emile Perrin, director of the theatre, quitted Paris and went to England where she gave a series of representations, causing a veritable sensation in London Society. Meanwhile M. Perrin instituted against her in the name of the Comedie Francaise, a law suit for breach of contract with damages laid at 300,000 francs.

It was at that juncture that Sarah accepted the offers of a manager for a tour in America. From America she returned to Paris, where she revised[?] all her old successes, and where, in 1888, at the Odeon, she produced [a] one act comedy from her own pen, entitled "L'Aveu."

Surely the length of this article, arguably a cheat-sheet, is testament to the fact that at the time, most Ottawans didn't know squat about Bernhardt, or about French theatre for that matter. But they were willing to learn, even if it meant mangling the names of French plays at social affairs.

The Journal writer refers to Bernhardt's age and to her "farewell tour" — she would have recently turned 61. Of the 1905-1906 tour, Wikipedia states...

...Bernhardt made her first American Farewell Tour in 1905–1906, the first of four farewell tours she made to the US, Canada, and Latin America, with her new managers, the Shubert brothers. She attracted controversy and press attention when, during her 1905 visit to Montreal, the Roman Catholic bishop encouraged his followers to throw eggs at Bernhardt, because she portrayed prostitutes as sympathetic characters...

To said bishop, I can only paraphrase Jesus Christ (John 8:7 NAS 1977) in reply — He who is without sin among you, let him be the first to throw an egg at her. That's religion for you — Angels, meet Pinhead.

Of the Russell Theatre, the Canadian Encyclopedia notes that...

Located at the corner of Queen and Elgin streets in Ottawa, the Russell Theatre opened on 15 October 1897. Used for operas, recitals, orchestra concerts, plays and other shows, the theatre was frequented by the capital's elite. It was destroyed by fire on 8 April 1901 and rebuilt to the original plans by the architect J.M. Wood of Detroit. Under the management of Ambrose J. Small, the New Russell Opera House opened on 5 October 1901. The Federal District Commission (now the National Capital Commission) expropriated the land to make room for Confederation Square, and the Russell Theatre closed its doors 14 April 1928...

(Full article here.)

The Russell Theatre sat immediately to the northwest of the present National Arts Centre. You may recognise the lawn sloping toward Canal Street, in this (south) side view of the theatre, dated 1928. Imagine the dramatic potential of that "stage door", with the adoring fans and the blowing of kisses and the bouquets and the tra-la-la.

The Sappers' Bridge and Chateau Laurier are just visible in the lower right, behind a leafless elm. Indeed, the far wall of the building would have lined up with what the original site of John Hooper's beloved 1981 "Balancing" sculpture.

via johnhooperstudios.com

Miss Bernhardt was scheduled to appear at the Russell on the evenings of December 6th and 7th, a Wednesday and a Thursday. Contemporary coverage suggests that this 1905 visit was her first to Ottawa. She would return to our city in 1916 and 1917, always to the Russell. Bernhardt died in Paris, with her son at her side, in the spring of 1923, aged 78.

Encroachment and Veneer

A robust clump of Ambrosia artemisiifolia L. seems poised to take over the sidewalk next to the Kent Place Apartments, 225 Kent Street. Yes, that's ragweed, churning out pollen 'til the frost cuts it down — soon, I hope.

Kent Place opened eighty years ago, in September 1938. Urbsite has written about it and some other walk-ups of that era here.

Kent Place, winter 2017-2018

What looks like a sandstone foundation is actually a sandy veneer applied to poured, coarse-aggregate concrete.

I didn't do that — it was already that way when I found it.

Kent Place was built in the lead-up to WWII. It opened as the "Courtland Arms" and was known as such into the 1980s.

"Sunset Crossing" and Smart Drinks at the Butler

This painting shows the Old CPR line through Eastview (now Vanier) as it would have appeared in 1955, per the license plate on the Sico-mobile. The rail line saw its maiden run a little over 100 years previous, on Christmas Day 1854, as the Bytown & Prescott Railway (B&PR). The stretch of track shown here carried its last train in 1966 — the right-of-way would become the Vanier Parkway.

The characters in the foreground look just like my mom and I. The fashions and the vehicles (actual fenders and super wide white-walls) are just like I remember them.

The Butler Motel, just visible at the left of the canvas, is a minor anachronism. The Reliance Motor Court didn't rebranded as the "Butler" until the summer of 1960 (see below).

Although displayed as a mural, "Sunset Crossing" is actually a very large painting executed on a tarpaulin. The artist is Robin Burgesse — read his bio at the Kanata Civic Art Gallery here and visit his website here. Mr Burgesse has managed to combine the crazy sway of a Thomas Hart Benton painting with the fraught, semaphoric flatness of an Alex Colville.

I photographed "Sunset Crossing" in August of 2013 (Canon EOS M), when it it was hanging over the front entrance of the Hobby House on Montreal Road. I haven't been out that way for a while, but according to Google Street View it was still on view there as of last summer.

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Now back to that Butler business...

ostensibly from 1933, as posted on eBay

Before the Butler became a full-blown sixties-style motel, it was the Reliance Motor Camp. This is a snap of the Reliance from 1933. Notice that describes itself as a camp rather than a motel, although by this time its function had well-evolved toward the latter. The cabins (you're looking at half of them right there) may look rustic but this part of Eastview was a well-established village by then.

The cabins were some 50 metres back from Montreal Road and roughly 70 metres from the train tracks. Somehow, I doubt that couples who rented them by the night were bothered by the noise. I rather think they howled and giggled when the train went by.

I happen to have an aerial view from the same year (source).

That's the Cummings Bridge to the upper left, with Montreal Road crossing the top half of the picture. The CPR track curves downward toward the right hand edge. I've highlighted what I figure to be the campground in yellow, with "Cabins 5, 6, 7 and 8" backing onto the western property line. The yellow arrows point at what look like four gas pumps — all-in-all tres motor-oriented.

Montgomery Street angles across the left of the photo. I've marked the #307, Eastview Public School (later the J. O. Swerdfager PS, then le Trillium, now l’école élémentaire publique Mauril-Bélanger) with green arrows.

And about the date of the "Butler" name...  Here's part of an article published by the Ottawa Citizen on May 12 1960. The piece discusses local liquor license applications made to the LLBO. In that context, the clipping speaks for itself.

So. As of May 1960, the Reliance Motor Court, owned or otherwise represented by two gentlemen named Butler, was in the process of sinking almost half a million dollars into a major upgrade of its Montreal Road operation. Want ads seeking staff for the "new Butler" motel would appear in local papers later that summer.

And I must say I almost shit myself reading Mrs. Stevenson's comment. I'm sure she meant well. Sadly, it hadn't occurred to her that tourists (from more enlightened, less boring jurisdictions) might actually be grateful to enjoy a drink or several, on the premises, without then having to get back in their cars, et cetera.

Anyhow, here's an advertisement from November 1960 that warms my heart no end...

I'll be at the Coachman, scoping out that classy mural behind the bar and enjoying the quiet surroundings and attentive service. If you don't find me there I'll be over at the Voyager, chowing down on that dee-lishus Continental Cooking!

(The Butler is now the Ottawa Plaza Inn.)

Thunderstruck

I tried, but was unable to find any news mentions of the lightning strike that damaged the Bank Street "Lone Pine" in the summer of 1880, per the Ottawa Citizen article cited two posts back — "...With the exception of one limb, the one blasted by lightning last summer, the "lone pine" might have lived out the present generation." (April 19, 1881).

I did however notice this "stormy" paragraph which appeared, uncredited, in that same newspaper in the spring of the year in question.*

Monday, May 10 1880, Ottawa Citizen

We must assume that at the time of writing, most readers would have understood the phrase "at the juncture of the two bridges" without further explanation. The likeliest "juncture" would have been that of the Sappers' (1827) and Dufferin (1870) Bridges, now the northeast corner of Confederation Square Triangle. I've circled that vantage point on a Goad map from the late 1800s.

Both structures were demolished circa 1912, replaced by the present Plaza Bridge during the Chateau Laurier / Central Station construction.

Anyone familiar with our city's weather patterns knows how summer storms so often seem to follow the Ottawa River as they track eastward. The south end of Major's Hill Park at the top of the locks would have indeed offered a "transcendant" view of passing storms, a vista not then occluded by the Chateau Laurier or the Daly Building. Better than any fireworks show if you ask me.

The "Bierstadt" mentioned in the article was the German-born, American landscape painter Albert Bierstadt (1830-1902) who specialized in dynamic views of clouds, mountains and bodies of water. For a man who painted so many clouds, many of them stormy, his work is oddly devoid of lightning. Did he feel that great bolts crashing from the heavens constituted overkill?

Bierstadt was "a guest at Rideau Hall" when the Marquess of Lorne and Princess Louisa, both lovers of the arts (if less so of each other) resided there. (Oscar Wilde is said to have tried, but failed, to snag an invite with the Lorne's when he visited Ottawa two years later.)

Bierstadt's attentions favoured American and European landscapes — Canadian depictions are scarce, and I find none overlooking the Ottawa River. By way of consolation, here is a view of Niagara Falls which he completed in 1869...  no storm but lots of thunder (I think this is from the Canadian side).

* I can't read this passage without hearing the voice of actor Simon Russell Beale, in character as the astonishing and delightful Ferdinand Lyle in Showtime's Penny Dreadful.

the Pinecone Tree

Further to the previous post, I reproduce the two pages of Romeyn Beck Hough's Handbook of the Trees of the Northern States and Canada (MacMillan, 1947) devoted to Pinus strobus L., the  (Eastern or Northern) White  Pine, aka the Weymouth or Soft Pine.

I'm not sure what Linnaeus had in mind when he designated this tree Pinus (pine) strobus (a pine or a pine-cone) back in 1753 — as if it were the only pine tree with pine-cones growing on it. But then this is the man who awarded Bearberry the binomial "Arctostaphylos uva-ursi" — name means "bear grapes", first in Greek, then in Latin. I'm reminded of Nina Hagen's New York, New York...

New York City is a place so nice
Everybody says it so they had to name it twice
New York, New York....

But yes, the pine tree with the pine cones.

Click on the pix to avoid eyestrain. And when you do, check out the map on the bottom of the second page for all the wacky provinces they never taught us about in high school.

Also on the second page, notice how closely the language of the text echoes the Ottawa Citizen articles previously cited...

"...these tracts have been largely cleared away to meet the needs and the wastes of a growing population, and now only occasional monarchs, towering head and shoulders above the surrounding forests of other growth, suggest the magnificence of the primeval Pine forests."

I should mention that The IUCN Red List has some comments of both historic and contemporary relevance — take a sec to check them out here.

a pine alone

White Pines, Rockcliffe Park 1908 — after W.J. Wilson

In the spring of 1881, the Ottawa Citizen printed two short pieces on two consecutive days. I reproduce them here.

[Monday, April 18 1881] 
The "Lone Pine" — This old landmark on the Bank Street Road, which was by order of the Vandals of the road company ordered to be levelled with mother earth, has since its downfall had its timbers put to a variety of uses. Several early residents of the locality have secured circular slabs of it, with which to make rustic tables and fancy articles to keep as mementos of the only remaining monarch of the primeval forest existing in the immediate vicinity of the city. There is some of it left yet.

The writer doesn't specify where along the "Bank Street Road" this once-majestic pine stood. That detail could have dovetailed nicely into a narrative of Bank Street's construction history. No matter. The date suggests that road-work either began or resumed as soon as the snow had melted, which is more useful than a kick in the head. The next day the following brief appeared...

[Tuesday, April 19 1881]
The "Lone Pine" — Under the above caption a paragraph appeared in yesterday's CITIZEN, and to-day from an experienced lumberman, none other than the Hon. James Skead [biography here], who should know something about such matters, gives the age of the "Monarch of the Forest" at from 275 to 280 years. Truly a venerable tree. The stump is 4ft. 6in. in diameter, and 13ft. 6in. in circumference. What a pity to cut it down. With the exception of one limb, the one blasted by lightning last summer, the "lone pine" might have lived out the present generation.

The "Lone Pine" was almost certainly a White Pine (Pinus strobus L.), the mainstay of the Ottawa Valley's lumber/timber trade. Red Pines (Pinus resinosa Ait.) were also taken, though their smaller size and reluctance to grow in exclusive tracts made them less desirable. The trunk of the Red Pine rarely exceeds 3 feet in diameter — Skead measured that of the Lone Pine's at four-and-a-half-feet across.

*      *      *

The photo at the head of this post shows a stand of White Pine in Rockcliffe Park, shot 110 years ago, apparently in the spring, given the patches of melting snow. The location reminds me of the Pavilion Meadow. If so, the trees are rooted in a layer of glacial till, spread atop the shaly bedrock of the Rockcliffe Formation.

The Ottawa area timber trade began in 1806 when Philemon Wright floated the first timber raft downriver from Gatineau to Quebec City. Thomas McKay acquired the lands that now make up Rockcliffe between 1829 and 1850. I think it's fair to guess that some time between 1806 and 1829, a good deal of the Park's original pine stands were logged in what may have been, in retrospect, a free-for-all.

We should also consider the likelihood that McKay himself cut trees, pines included, on these lands while they were in his possession. This would make virtually all of Rockcliffe's pines, including those in the photo, post-logging regrowth. I mention this in light of the Citizen writer's claim that the Lone Pine was "the only remaining monarch of the primeval forest existing in the immediate vicinity of the city." Exactly how accurate was this statement and did the writer's "immediate vicinity of the city" include Rockcliffe?