Community, Work, and Life in Old Ottawa East - Ottawa, Ontario.
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Weathervane
N 45° 24.378 W 075° 40.570
18T E 447085 N 5028309
Community, Work, and Life in Old Ottawa East is the subject of this artistically decorated utility box located at the corner or Clegg and Main Streets, in Ottawa, Ontario.
Waymark Code: WM11T3Q
Location: Ontario, Canada
Date Posted: 12/14/2019
Views: 1
Inscription on the utility box:
From tap dancing lessons to the Wildwooke Snowshoe Club, old Ottawa East has been a hub of community spirit since the mid-1800's.
"At the turn of the century, Old Ottawa East was virtually unrecognizable. Not yet amalgamated with the City of Ottawa, it was a small town that was booming with trade, industry, and agriculture. Much of the land was divided into estates owned by the business-owning families whose names are captured in many street names in the area: Clegg, Brown, Slattery, Ballantyne, Paterson, and Lees.
Betty Hill (nee Brown) grew up in The Pines (demolished in the 1970s to make way for the Cuban embassy at the corner of Main and Riverdale). Betty and her daughter Susan shared photographs with Capital History researchers Meredith Comba and Rebecca Sykes. Among these was the Wildwood Snowshoe Club photograph you can see on our installation. Betty shared the names of the women in the club: Jessie Lees, Victoria Lees, Lizzie Lees, and Jessie Freeland.
As Betty recalls, Old Ottawa East was also a place of hard work. The Brown family had a boat building and repair shop on the canal, and other families had orchards, farms, and other businesses that employed many people. Robert Lee’s well-known county attorney’s home, Wildwood, had a lush orchard, while the Slattery family had a house that was a spot for sightseers to stop and also a large cattle abattoir.
In the 1940s and 1950s, the estates were divided into smaller lots and the new community inherited the pre-existing playful spirit of the area and continued the community-building tradition in full force throughout the 1950s. Events like the Frost Ball which only came to an end at the turn of the millennium.
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visit link)
The sun rising in the East casts a golden glow as it emerges through iridescent clouds, creating an optical haze that envelops the eager snowshoer impatiently waiting to try her new First Nation's built snowshoes. Expertly crafted from the wood of an ash tree and intricately laced with caribou rawhide also known as "babiche", the wearer will soon be able to walk with ease on the deep snow cover and enjoy the best that winter has to offer. As she enters the forested trail, our last sight of her is of the pom poms on her tuque swaying from side to side.