Lost Ottawa Facebook 2013
Here are all the Lost Ottawa posts that appeared on Facebook in 2013, starting with the most recent and going backwards.
You can view the posts in various ways. You can read the descriptions on this page and see the initial comments. You can click on the three dots at the bottom of a post to see more comments. You can click on the picture to see a “full screen” version of the picture with comments. You can view the original post on Facebook and leave more comments there.
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A well-to-do Ottawa family, c.1881.About 25 years ago I paid $5 for a red flocked velvet photo album of portraits of someone's friends and relatives that I found in a flea market down near Morrisburg. It was a present to a woman from her cousin and the gift album was dated 1881. The photos seem to be family and friends, but I have never been able to identify anyone by trying to linking the few full names names attached to the folks (most were cousin Mary, Aunt whatever -- to current Ottawa families with photos of kin from the 1880s. My original thought was to find a family for whom the album had some real meaning, but I was totally unsuccessful, which I guess helps explain why it was in a box of junk at a flea market to begin with. I will post three of the photos I found in the album, all taken by Ottawa based photography studios.
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i always find it so sad when i find old family photos at yard sales, flea markets, etc. Sad that they've been forgotten or that the family has died out....
The fashions are closer to 1890.
I have some photos of this vintage of my own ancestors but some have no names and I find that infuriating. On another note, there were quite a few photographers on Sparks and Bank St. My great great grandparents went all the way to Sparks St from the township of Nepean to have their portraits done.
If it's too cold outside, you could always have yourself photographed on a toboggan in the studio, like Percy and Arthur Onderdonk here, circa 1890.
Tobogganing was so popular in Ottawa at the time, it was thought worthy of a portrait by Topley.
(City of Vancouver AM54-S4-: Port P587.08)
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I had a toboggan just like this 🙂
Lol
“Uplifting".
Depression relief project wear from December of 1933.
The other day we mentioned that Ottawa had more than 20,000 people out of work in the Depression. A series of relief projects camps were set up for the unemployed otherwise homeless.
This is the clothing and kit you received when entering the camp at Rockcliffe Air Station. It would be about all you had in the world.
(PA-035183)
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Wow, we certainly did a better job of providing for the homeless back then.
In return for bunkhouse residence, three daily meals, work clothes, medical care and 20 cents a day, the "Royal Twenty Centers," laboured at 44-hour work weeks clearing bush, building roads, planting trees and constructing public buildings. I'm curious which public buildings were constructed in Ottawa. I did some research about their work on buildings at the Royal Military College in Kingston. everitas.rmcclub.ca/?p=33916
I'd wear these "hobo" threads any day in today's world
Your Morning Commute: Assuming you aren't still on holiday -- here is the junction of Wellington and Rideau at Sapper's Bridge, just before 1900. Some nice empty streets. Just a few Ottawa ghosts.
Shot from the Corrie Building, the picture shows the road down to the canal, as well as a driveway in Majors Hill Park, where the Chateau Laurier would be about 15 years later.
(LAC PA-013123)
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for some the commute but for me this is the return leg of my lunchtime walk. I start up Sparks St from Kent, cross over at the war memorial, loop around and come back to Kent on Wellington. In the summer months I walk up on the roadway of the front lawn of parliament hill. Very cool picture thanks
very cool
We had streets like that in 1900? I would have guessed a lot later than that like close to the '20s.
End of the day in Constance Bay, up the river and out the March Road.This is a scan of a post card of a view of the Ottawa River from Constance Bay.
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We used to go to Britania Bay when I was a little girl with my Mom Aunt and cousins .Mom would pack every thing in those big paper shopping bags ,and we would travel by street car what fun and good memories
Here is a wonderful rare video from 1950, Bay Days at Constance Bay, there is no sound, my Dad is in this !!! www.youtube.com/watch?v=9jTxUKMxZPM
Where are you going for New Year's Eve? How about going to see Ottawa fixture Jack McPartlin at the Beacon Arms on Albert. Rooms for the night only 15 bucks!
Jack McPartlin was one of Ottawa's most popular lounge musicians and comic presenter too. He died at age 62 in Year 2000.
And at the Fyfe and Drum -- Telemann. I'm finding it almost impossible to find information about this band apart from the fact that they seem to have been from Toronto.
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Speaking of Jack McPartlin, I picked this up a couple of months ago at a thrift shop.
I thought 'Gloves' McGinty the usual headliner at the Broken Arms in those days...
I wonder why supper clubs went out of style?
Season's Greetings from an early Ottawa band.A Card from the Staccatos
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The Original " 5 Man Electrical Band"
Brian Raiding, Les Emmerson, Vern Craig, Mike Bell and Rick Bell (Belanger)....knew them well.
They played at my HS grad. The good old days.
Now back to Ottawa Winter!A winter Sunday at Hog's Back Park
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back in the days when children played outside...
We used to ski down the little hill at the back of the park, toward what is now the fence along Heron/Baseline. My dad broke his leg on a mogul on that hill the first time he tried out his new downhill skis. (I used some beartrap cross-country skis that were way too long for downhill.)
More warming thoughts ...Another beach photo...this one is labelled, "Constance Beach" where there must have been lots of public beach and was quite the excursion from Ottawa in 1936! My father is the youngest in the photo and sits with his siblings and his mother. My uncle, with the hat, the one who still lives, is now 89.
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Constance Bay was the vacation beach of choice for my Mom's family when she was growing up. She is going to be 94 this coming February <3 Will see what pics I can dig up.
There still is "lots of public beach" - Constance Bay beach is one of my favourite spots to sit and think ... lovely expanse of sand!
What a lovely momento! Photos of everyday adventures we rarer then.
More thoughts of a warm summer day -- on the blustery winter one we seem to be having.This photo was taken in 1946 on the beach in Constance Bay. Another popular summer destination for families in the Ottawa area.
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We used to swim and picnic there in the early 70s and my mum's Granny Eager used to rent a small cottage in the 30s and 40s which still exists on the approach in from the highway and she ran a convenience store there during the summer months. Mum used to tell me there was once an old steamship by the point and a bar/restaurant was run out of the hull in it at beach level. She went up on deck once as a young woman and it was sufficiently high she got nervous and had to be escorted down by a gentleman who noticed her up there. I always wondered what became of that old steamer and used to look for evidence of it but sadly none was ever found. In another story about Constance Bay she told me there was once a fellow who used to buzz the trees with his biplane when there weren't yet rules against such things, and come to think of it, at one time they also had slot machines for awhile but they must have got carted off the short time Prohibition existed in Canada.
Sure were lots of boats on the beach
My home. I walk that beach every day with my dogs from early Spring til Winter. Interesting to see what it looked like back then.
Sunday Drive: Just a little farther up the Ottawa from Norway Bay was another favorite getaway spot -- the Pine Lodge Resort in Bristol.
This family owned resort was opened in 1919 and is still there. The Lodge was apparently built in the 1920s, but there were also cabins and a campground.
This is one of those businesses the advent of the automobile made possible -- or at least successful. Getting out of town was one of the main selling points for early cars.
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Wendy, Ron, Mike, Scott, Kerry!
Was that the only place with cabin rental in NB? If so, its likely where my parents had their honeymoon in the 50s
Any Sand Bay pictures??
One of the old timey features of the Bristol/Norway area -- Pop Welche's Grocery. Selling both Pure Spring Pop and RC Cola to cool you down after a trip to the beach.
No date but 1950s or 60s?
(Photo: norwaybay.com)
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Shhhhhhh........listen closely.........banjos!
Special place! Louis was a special man.
Miss it ..so many memories
Sunday Drive: If this was the summer, you could take the 148 on the Quebec side and drive northwest from Ottawa to Scobie House on Norway Bay in about an hour.
Scobie House, originally called the River View Inn, was a resort hotel built in 1906 among the magnificent pines of the area. The resort was a popular destination for people who wanted to get out of the city. It closed in 1980, after a disastrous fire.
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Norway bay has a special place in my heart since my family once a upon a time ran a conscience store there.
I do miss the RVI! 🙁
I miss the RVI!
Monsieur Saumure and his horse out and about around Ottawa, 1942This is my Father Jean-Paul Saumure with his horse Filou and Buggy in 1942 ..this was the only way of transportation .
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Gas was rationed in 1942 so he was lucky to have the horse. 🙂
Any relation to the Saumures of Orleans and later Hintonburg? Jean Louis Saumure.
Heading out for a Saturday Night and some awesome entertainment? In December of 1976, you could have checked out disco band Spectacle -- at least I guess that's their name -- at Ottawa's Embassy West Motor Hotel. Seven guys must have made a helluva show (even if it was disco).
Confess now.
(Ad from the Ottawa Citizen)
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Were they just disco or were the latin american too?
"Say, don't I know you from the... 'Other Place'...?"
Yikes! I played in a disco band about a year after this - White Ginger. We toured all over. Boy, those were the days.
Did someone mention Norway Bay, up the Ottawa River? Not the best picture, but here is the beach in what looks like the 20s.
Dig the swimsuits on the ladies.
(Outaouais Heritage Web Magazine)
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Does anyone remember Scobie House? I passed my Junior swimming level off the ferry Dock there when I was 6. I have so many happy memories of hot sand, golf course filled with bees nest, playing in the water all day, canoeing, listening to the whipper wills and loons in the evening and those beautiful pines, and running barefoot threw the sand and trails, and playing cards under the hanging lightbulb over the lie oleum covered kitchen table at night.
Love Norway Bay! My Dad had a friend who had a cottage on it and we spent many happy times there!
More Norway Bay + Bristol Beach, Pine Lodge, Scobie House, the old Dance Hall from the 40's posts, please!
One place you could go for New Year's Eve? Thought to be Al's Steak House in Bell's Corners, from back in the day.Anyone know where this is? I can't make out what it says on the side but it does say "Hotel"
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I thnk I remember this building from when we lived in Lynwood Village in the mid-sixties. It was where the Purple Cow was then located, whose sign with an udder udder Mayor Whitton was so distressed. She eventually managed to increased public pressure so much that the owner had to take it down.
It's definitely Al's
Also I recognise it as a known picture with all the gentlemen standing out front.
Kids out to play in the snow in an unidentified city park during Ottawa's Winter Carnival, in the 20s.
Bozo the dog refused to be harnessed to the toboggan for a little mushing, but still seems willing to help one of the youngsters with his skiing.
(Alberta on Record, Whyte Museum of the Rockies, CN181.)
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remember those days days, snow and ice stuck to your wool clothing and refused to let go. We had to hand our coats and leggings by the fire in the kitchen.
Or when your mom bundled you up so much that a mere slip and fall was the death knell - how on earth would you ever get up LOL
Oh my gosh I remember those times , not that early but cold winters
Having breakfast? Rivermen dine at the foot of a huge logjam in the Gatineau River, not far from the capital.
Scene looks tranquil, but the jam could burst at any time, and it was their job to free the logs. I think you can see how dangerous it was.
(Lost the source! Will put it in when I find it.)
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According to the Gatineau Valley Historical Society Image Bank this photo is circa 1910 but I can't find the source at the moment (probably LAC). A great photo - and for anyone interested in the history of the lumber industry the Society plans to reprint Hurling Down the Pine by John Hughson and Courtney Bond this coming Fall. Other resources at www.gvhs.ca
Les Raftsmen 🙂
Every time there has been a new sports team announced in Ottawa I have hoped they would be named the Raftsmen or the Rivermen.
Yoyo, the recurrent craze ..."Sparks St Mall. The yoyo busker guy amusing an audience of little kids. Don't think he was going to get much pay for his act but look at their faces." -Norm Early 1970s. Photo by Norm MacLeod.
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Such enjoyment on little faces.
Kid in stripes looks like Bobby from the Brady Bunch.
Sister had an old wooden Yoyo in the early/mid 60s. I could never do more than up and down but a few classmates during this 70s craze could do a good bunch of impressive tricks, by then though they were making them in plastic which perhaps made some difference in performance though I really wouldn't know.
While on the topic of horses ...First mounted parade of Lord Strathcona's Horse, B & C squadrons, Ottawa, by Steele and Co. March 7 1900
[The Aberdeen Pavilion, constructed 1898 by Moses C Edey]
Glenbow Archives, NA-3755-10
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The house I live in housed one of these men...what is interesting is that sitting on my mantle is the chocolate box that Queen Victoria gave him...and the stirrups pictured in this photo...small world.
It is so disheartening to hear news like this 🙁
Oh, that's awful... I had no idea. :(((
So where are you heading on New Year's Eve? How about the Paddock, next to Connaught Park on the Aylmer Road. You've got Roland Deveze "direct from France," says this ad from the Ottawa Citizen for December 31, 1976.
I hope the "Coupe Paddock" was ... uh ... beef?
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I like the part of the menu that says "white bread" as though this is a gourmet treat! Why not sourdough, pumpernickel or rye and was this just slices off a loaf or rolls?
I like prices
The building where the Paddock was located is now the 'Cabaret Le Pink' club.
When you are travelling up river ... there`s the Venice of America.Norway Bay Quebec
I believe this ad is from the early 1920's. Norway Bay is still a popular summer cottage destination for many families from Ottawa. Over the generations, as families moved away and expanded, many families still return year after year, from all over Canada, United States, South America and Europe. Prices are no longer $100 to $250!
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Our cottage was at Sand Point growing up but we always used to take the boat across the river to Norway Bay because the beach was much nicer for swimming and there weren't any river stones in the water
Hey Vasco! Unsubscribe or unfriend... The rest of us enjoy thes posts.
I know my mom went to Norway Bay at some point in her youth. We took a road trip by there and Sand Point sometime too in the late 70s and I was disappointed to find they no longer had ferry service though the wharves were still intact and strong. Does anyone know of their condition now if they even remain and exist?
Check the prices on these excursions -- once a big deal in Ottawa -- combining boats and trains. Only $26 to Boston.Steam boat tourism
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Here's the 411 -- of `441944 Ottawa city directory
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Could you please look up C. Dycie (will be downtown area). Actually you'll see A.B. Dycie, R. Dycie, and maybe one or two more. Thanks. 🙂
Thank you Philip Shaw Bova. 🙂 Ed White I've gone through the city of Ottawa directories at the national archives on Wellington but that was about 15 years ago....will now try to go to the nepean location. Thanks!
By chance would Wallace A. Lester Insurance be listed.
So where are you going for New Year's Eve? Here's four choices for rockin' out from the Ottawa Citizen for December 31, 1977.
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Lick 'N Stick was out of Toronto and was fronted by guitarist Paul James, and were commercial-sounding with some blues and funk / R&B and reggae influences and had a couple of 45 singles. Paul James went on to get a Juno award and is still a working musician, playing blues, boogie, rockabilly, etc. Bobby Brown was a pianist and accordionist and formed the Cape Breton Symphony Fiddlers in the mid 1970s for the CTV series the John Allan Cameron Show (later moved to CBC). He formed Bobby Brown & The Scottish Accent, playing and recording Scottish and Celtic music for many years around Southern Ontario and passed away a couple of years ago.
Shame on whoever destroyed the music scene on Rideau.
We had the New Year's Eve party at our new place.
Group of men in the main sleeping hut for Relief Project No. 27 at Ottawa Air Station, as the Rockcliffe Airport was originally known. Date is March 22, 1933.
By the end of that year, there were 22,000 men out of work in Ottawa (out of a total population of 126,872). Relief Project 27 was one of a series of camps across the country, organized by the government to provide men with food and shelter in exchange for work.
There were crowded wooden barracks at Rockcliffe, as well as shack settlements in Brewers Park, Plouffe Park, and the Lees Avenue Dump.
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If you were a single man and unemployed, or if you were arrested for vagrancy, this was y9our fate. Single able bodied men could not collect relief (or welfare). They were paid a dollar a day (very little money, even for the time). Much of the landscaping and features along the Rockliffe Parkway and in the park itself were done by these men. The camps themselves were a breeding ground for discontent and radical politics.
Brewer Park didn't exist then but freight yards where Carleton University now stands did and those shacks you mentioned were ramshackle hobo shacks and it was known as Hobohemia. My mother was maybe 5-6 then and told by her dad not to venture down there when they lived on Pansy Avenue. She said they were kind of creepy looking men and one evening someone grabbed her by the ankles from under the back steps and she wondered if it might have been one of them. They later moved across Bank Street to Windsor Avenue where Mum had no more such scary adventures other than the advent of war which no doubt scared everyone.
My, at least there were structures available to homeless people. I'v e even seen these people sleeping in the cold- and I've sent one totally succumbing to old age and the cold to hospital (or the morgue-I didn't check). "There but for fortune go you or I" (from Joan Baez)
Something you wouldn't want to do today. Three Rockcliffe Air Force Base personnel testing aircrew survival suits in the Ottawa River on December 27, 1943.
That would wake you up. Brrrr!
(LAC PA-064799)
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When I worked the canal for NCC one year I had to don a red survival suit to go drill a few holes to verify ice thickness after a big thaw and confirm things were safe for reopening for skating. It was plenty cold and pretty obvious beforehand too the ice was plenty thick, and with the final hole we drilled the ice was solid right to the bottom at Bronson. After that I was soaked through and sweating like a pig and took myself a good hour drying out before returning to work in the afternoon.
I'm woken up just looking at this ...
Polar Bear swim about a week early......
Someone mentioned Dome Hill in the Experimental Farm as an excellent spot for some winter activities back in the day. Here's Ottawa three skiers at Dome Hill, sunset in 1931.
This steep slope is actually in the Arboretum.
(CSTM CN34711, via Whyte Museum of the Canadian Rockies)
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My parents used to take us tobogganing at the Arboretum! It was great fun!
tobogganed here many many times as a child...then took my own kids there. and now my grandchildren....
The toboggan hill has a name, I didn't know that, perhaps it means lava dome since it is a major fault line?
Blustery day in Ottawa ...Ottawa can be beautiful in the winter too. Photo by Norm MacLeod. Early 1970s.
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Ottawa is especially lovely in the winter.
I work outside and love the cold and sound the snow makes when it's really cold, not there yet this year, though we do have almost five full days to go though.
An Xmas gift you might have got in the past. Dressed to the Nines. Portrait from Pittaway Jarvis no less.About 25 years ago I paid $5 for a red flocked velvet photo album of portraits of someone's friends and relatives that I found in a flea market down near Morrisburg. It was a present to a woman from her cousin and the gift album was dated 1881. The photos seem to be family and friends, but I have never been able to identify anyone by trying to linking the few full names names attached to the folks (most were cousin Mary, Aunt whatever -- to current Ottawa families with photos of kin from the 1880s. My original thought was to find a family for whom the album had some real meaning, but I was totally unsuccessful, which I guess helps explain why it was in a box of junk at a flea market to begin with. I will post three of the photos I found in the album, all taken by Ottawa based photography studios.
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Got a bunch of these in an old box - what to do!!!
A not so traditional way to spend an Ottawa Boxing Day -- Go Karting in Nepean. The pic says 2008.
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Inside, like where?!
Looks like the curling rink at the Nepean Sportsplex
Traditional way to enjoy an Ottawa Boxing Day -- terrifying yourself on a toboggan run.
No place identified for this photo, circa 1952.
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This brought back memories of learning to ski at Carlington Park.
we used to tobogan near Green's Creek off the Montreal road when I was a kid...
Ah yes, slamming in to a tree in the Arboretum... was the last time we tobogganed THERE. lol Green's Creek was awesome when I was in high school. ALL the way to the creek...
Boxing Day story from the Ottawa Citizen for December 22, 1939. At the time, City Council was voting to make it a Civic Holiday -- so the workers could have a break and there would be no shopping.
Boxing Day has a British history, but story raises a question about how holidays were established before the war and even when Boxing Day became a true holiday.
In the story there were City Council Scrooges who of course declared: "Harrumph, Ottawa already has too many holidays."
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Should be a Civic Holiday so people working in retail also get time off after working all the those extra hours.
They thought that adding Boxing Day would somehow add to the religious significance of Christmas, boy were they wrong$
Jeepers everybody ...they actually did try to make my Birthday a holiday ...Cool! LOL.
People working off their Christmas dinner, skiing and tobogganing near Bank Street in what I think is Central Park towards the end of Patterson Creek, in the 1920s.
It was the Ottawa improvement Commission that built the driveways, and many of the city's parks. They made a big difference to life here. I love seeing how much the parks are used. That doesn't happen everywhere.
(LAC PA-034354)
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I walked around looking everywhere for this and my best guess is it is in Central Park, west side of Bank Street facing south. The major clue is the chimney on the house on the very right hand side of the original picture. That house is still there although from the perspective of the picture you can't see the chimney from the park anymore as there are now houses in the way. The chimney is clear from the Powell side though.
If only we could turn back time!
This is still happens today in The Glebe, Clemow Ave east side of Bank Street, Central Park & Patterson Creek.
From our friend over at the Ogilvy's page ...DAY 7: 1940 "Charles Ogilvy Limited CHRISTMAS CARD" (unsent w/ original envelope (not pictured)). This is from my personal collection.
I recently bought 35mm slides from a gentleman of the 1969 Fire on Rideau Street and when I got there to pick it up, he had located this also. This is super awesome.
As you can imagine, I'm protective of this piece, but it will be featured properly in my book. The only thing in the original are the foxing marks due to age.
Hope you enjoy this one, and I hope it was worth the "hype".
MERRY CHRISTMAS EVERYONE!! Here's to a great 2014!! 🙂
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Glad so many of you enjoyed this. It was the coolest thing to put in my personal collection. I can't imagine there are many of these out there anymore. 🙂
I'll bet quite a few Ottawa households were playing some fine Xmas music yesterday. I had Christmas albums by James Brown and, of course, the Charlie Brown Christmas album. How about you?A fund raising effort Christmas LP produced by CFMO (in the late 1980 I believe).
Workers' History Museum
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I now have 3500+ Christmas (NOT Holiday, Apple) tracks on iTunes, out of 51,000 total tracks. This includes 140+ versions of my favourite, The Christmas Song.
The usual Muzak. Bert Kaempfert, Ray Conniff, Mitch Miller. If things get a bit too lively, throw in some Percy Faith.
Love the Charlie Brown sound track. I have a ton of Christmas recordings.
In 1998, I lived in Boston. This is what my Yankee pals gave me for Xmas, saying they had found something to represent the Canadian Dream, as opposed to the American Dream.
You don't see the red coats around Ottawa much these days. And there are darn few horses to kiss.
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Moutie horses aren't brown! But it's the thought that counts.
L.O. you're too young to recall the cartoon hero Dudley Do-Right of the Mounties!
About too few horses to kiss? You just have to know where to look... hahaha
Lost Ottawa (right) and his brother congratulate themselves on the superb giant turkey they have cooked. Okay ... it's true ... all we really did was measure the temperature to see that it was finally done.
Hey, we also took it out of the pan. And carved. That counts, right guys?
Hopefully, just about now, today's bird will come out just as nice!
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Merry Christmas!! Thank you so much for finding, researching, and sharing so much Ottawa history!
Love Lost Ottawa - look at it every day. Thanks.
Nice colour on the bird, even nicer platter underneath.
Lost Ottawa on Kitchen Patrol at my brother's house, a few years back.
Today, we're hosting the Christmas Dinner -- for 26 people -- so this is what I'm doing right about now.
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Merry Christmas Lost Ottawa!
Bravo, L.O.!