Light Rail and Public Transit in Ottawa

George Nelms and Charlotte Whitton,  Mayors, period 1954-1964

Looking back in how the Capital-City of Ottawa was governed in that period we see many poor decisions taken at a time when the enthusiasm of the final Victory of 1945 did not support the hoped long term results in terms of urban development. There was wild hopes that the years after the war and the long economic depression would bring unparalleled prosperity and growth. Out with the old and in with the new, no matter if the ideas were not fully formed or even wise.

Ottawa saw a complete re-organisation of the infrastructure of the City, dramatic changes took place. The infamous Queensway 417 was built in what was then the Southern border of the old downtown, with further housing development south of the highway in the 1960's to 1980's this road permanently divided the City from East to West without really providing any solution to traffic congestion we know all too well today. No one really wants to cross the City from East to West or vice versa on any day after 3pm if it can be avoided. Had the City fathers and mothers thought about it and invested properly that highway would never have been built and today we know how difficult it is to remedy this problem, so it is being expanded as we speak with further lanes of traffic being added, a band-aid solution we are already regretting despite the millions spent.

The other disaster in poor decision making from City Hall we have to contend with today is the very unwise decision by City Council to remove all public transit within the City and the suburbs with the exception of very poor bus service on congested roads. The thinking back then was that in the very near future, say 1984 everyone would have a car like George Jetson and fly around town. The car was the solution of the future and everyone would have one. In the following decades this is how Ottawa developed, giant shopping malls along Hway 417 and in the 1980's the Rideau Centre in the downtown core. You have to have a car to access those malls. A suburb called Kanata, so far removed from the City that to this day it stand at 35 Km from the city centre, back then everyone was waxing poetic about it, not so much today. Or building a new City Hall on Green Island far removed from the core centre and unconnected to anything else in town. The building was finally abandoned in the 1990's and is now an annex to the Foreign Ministry.

The same was done with the Union Train Station in the heart of Ottawa, it was banished to an isolated area south of the City difficult to access. The City up to 1960 had an extensive system of Street cars and suburban trains, all was done away with by the 1960's, leaving commuters to fend for themselves or drive to work. It is strange to see photos of the time with people taking a suburban train into the City as far as Wakefield on the Quebec side of the river. One such person to do this was Prime Minister Mackenzie King, difficult to imagine today with our current PM Harper fancying himself as the Emperor of Canada with his gigantic motorcade of 15 cars.

In 1960 the population of Ottawa was still relatively small at 328,000 pop. today in 2014 the population is at 1,200,000. But little has changed since the 1960's in terms of public transit, hence the urgency to solve the problem. The current Mayor Jim Watson proposed and his now seeing the implementation of Phase I of the Light Rapid Transit (train) which will go from Tunney's Pasture to Blair Road, it is a first phase but already a great improvement and a plan with a vision. A tunnel under the city is approaching completion and there will now be stations at Rideau Centre and University of Ottawa Campus, the Train Station. It is a system for all users and not just a commuter system as detractors (mostly Conservatives and Reformers). It is hoped that the Phase two which will fan out West, South and East will also cover the Airport and the suburb by 2028.

What you realize when you see this plan is that it had been proposed in 1915 but lack of vision and money saw no action at all. We are doing today what should have been done in 1960 instead of the obtuse decision of a City Council dominated by rich and powerful merchants who did not think much of the people of Ottawa.  This LRT Project is the largest and most expensive since the building of the Rideau Canal in 1820 by Colonel John By at $3.1 Billion dllrs. The project phase I of the LRT with the Stations is to be completed by 2017.

What the Station at St-Laurent shopping mall will look like.

What is to my mind the number of angry and anti-public transit voices. During the last Municipal Election a small but vocal minority of extremist supported by John Baird and other Conservative Ministers of the Harper Cabinet all directed by the Prime Minister's Office came out strongly against the project. Their candidate who was another puppet with a less than credible plan tried to discredit the rapid transit project. Mayor Watson won his re-election with a strong and clear mandate, so his vision is going ahead, we, Ottawans can only win. However the attacks against the plan are still being waged by the National Capital Commission another puppet of the Harper Regime, who will try to block the project and the Federal government has not said they will participate financially to the Phase II. By then hopefully we will have another government in Canada more inclusive and open minded.

Map of Phase I the names of the Stations have been changed since this map was first published.

Downtown East is called Parliament now, Train is now called Tremblay Rd. and LeBreton is called by an Algonquin name PIMISI. 

Some photos around Ottawa

In 2017 Canada will celebrate it's 150 Anniversary as a unified country, this is when the 4 original Provinces ( Quebec, Ontario, Nova Scotia and New Brunswick) united to create the Federal Government in Ottawa.

So you can imagine everything that can be re-built, renovated, improved is being done right now and will be until 2018. The City Ottawa is under an impossible to drive around program of re-building the sewer system on all major roads, re-surfacing is taking place also, a new light train system is being built. Then major improvements and new buildings are springing up everywhere. The Queensway highway 417 which crosses the city from East to West is also being enlarged with new overpass and more lanes.  In the centre of the City the Parliament precinct is completely being re-built at a cost of well over 3.5 Billion dollars, politicians want the best for themselves but not for you. There are barricades everywhere, not to mention new monuments to pet projects of our controversial and infamous Prime Minister Stephen Harper, hopefully he will be gone next year and polls indicate that there will be a totally new administration in town in 2015.

So in other words skip Ottawa until 2017 when most of this construction will be over with. Ottawa is worth visiting when there is no construction. However in the summer what is very nice around the city is the display of flowers.

One of the original Trafalgar Square (London) fountain from 1843 given to the National Gallery of Canada in 1955 and installed in Confederation Park in 1975.

 Flowers on Elgin street in front of the National Arts Centre

Flowers on Sparks Street 

Sparks Street is the oldest pedestrian mall in Canada. Unfortunately deserted after 5pm and on weekends. It is an office tower area with very few shops and a lot of construction right now in the Parliament Precinct area. 

Queen Street, the Light Train tunnel is 30 meters underneath but the real story here is the old Cemetery and the hundred or so graves discovered in this trench. About 110 years ago the cemetery was moved from this area but those who could not afford to move their dead relatives or the dead who had no one to claim them were simply paved over. Now the City has moved everyone out and is looking for relatives who might want to claim those unfortunates. This is going to be very difficult to see the least. They probably will simply end up in a communal grave in one of the Cemeteries in the City.

The West Block of Parliament under wraps, no it is not an art installation by Christo et Jeanne-Claude. No it is part of the massive renovation project of $3.5 Billion dollars so far to modernize these buildings built around 1860. This is only phase one, once this project is completed in 2017 the central block will be closed and renovated. Both the House of Commons and the Senate will move out. The House will sit in the Courtyard of the West Block in a exact replica of the House and the Senate will sit in the old Train Station for a period of a few years. The whole project is to be completed by 2027. The final cost is a closely guarded secret.

 The Bank of Montreal branch on Sparks street at O'Connor across the street from Parliament
is to become the new Party Central for Parliament. This spectacular building in pure Art Deco was built in 1930, it is all black and white marble inside and the floor also in marble is made to look like waves from sea to shining sea. It is now under renovation some $210 million dollars has been spent modifying the building, I do hope they have not ruined it in the process. Mind you the public will never know since once it is completed it will be off limits to mere mortals.

Details of the wrought iron in the windows re-silvered and re-gilded.

Sparks Street in Ottawa has been transformed in the last 50 years from a vibrant pedestrian mall with shops to a dead zone. Once the Parliamentary precinct work is completed it will become part of Official Ottawa and off limits to citizens, occupied mostly by Parliamentarians and their staff when they are in town Monday to Thursday.

However another chain is opening for beer drinkers, Ottawa is a beer town it is simply a question of dollars and cents, you can buy a lot more beer than wine.

In the old abandoned Woolworth's and Zeller's store Bier Markt is opening a giant restaurant and beer garden. You have to wonder how they will succeed given that they depend on the lunch crowd. No one around after 5PM and no one on weekends.

Another heritage building circa 1890, the old Yesterday's which use to be Sherry's restaurant, the food was rather pedestrian to go with the mall, it finally closed. It is being renovated and Dunn's smoke meat house is opening to go with the Beer hall across the street.

Grant House on Elgin Street, for years this old patrician house built in 1873 was a famous roast beef restaurant, then it closed. The house sat empty for a few years and now it has been restored and Chef Beckta is opening a million dollar restaurant and wine cellar which given his reputation would be a premier restaurant in the Capital. The house has been incorporated into the new Canada Council building.

Next to Grant House is the First Baptist Church c. 1875.

The Old Teacher's College on Elgin street, c.1870 now the Office of the Mayor of Ottawa.