Ottawa Italia

Once you’ve gone through cooking school, or if you want to forego that step, simply head over to Little Italy’s Trattoria Caffé Italia. With one of the best wine cellars in the city, it has been run by the Carrozza family for over 20 years, originally opening in the 1950s as a billiard and card-laying social club for the Preston Street community. On the corner of Gladstone and Preston.

Some other recommended Italian restaurants: Allegro Ristorante (422 Preston Street, 235-7454), Ciccio Caffe (330 Preston Street, 232-1675), Giovanni’s, featuring Toscany Regional Cuisine (362 Preston Street, 234-3156), La Dolce Vita (180 Preston Street, 233-6239), La Roma (430 Preston Street) and La Vecchia Trattoria (228 Preston Street, 230-0009).

If straightforward Italian doesn’t float your boat, get down to Little Italy’s The Prescott (379 Preston Street, 232 1136. One of the oldest taverns in town, they cleaned up a few years ago, somewhat taking the point out of going to a cleaned up “gritty tavern,” but they still have some of the best pasta and meatball sandwiches in town. Grab a quart and watch the game, even.

Dining in Ottawa’s Little Italy

If you want to talk food, than you have to talk about one of downtown Ottawa’s most important neighbourhoods, Little Italy.

Ottawa’s Little Italy was originally an Irish neighbourhood housing employees of nearby lumberyards before an influx of Italian immigration at the turn of the century. By 1908, the Italian community around Division (now Booth) Street was firmly established, with the building of St. Anthony’s Church in 1913 and the forming of the local chapter of the Sons of Italy. A second wave of Italian immigration came after WWII, and turned the area between Booth and Preston Street from Carling Avenue north into Ottawa’s unofficial official “Little Italy,” featuring fine restaurants, street parties, and other activities (World Cup Soccer in Little Italy is a must).

The City of Ottawa officially recognized the community in 1983 by designating Preston Street Corso Italia and Gladstone Avenue as Via Marconi. Their website lists local businesses, including restaurants, night life, services and entertainment, as well as information on the annual Ferrari Festival, Italian Week Settimana Italiana, and La Vendemmia - Ottawa’s Celebration of Italian Wine & Food in September. 

Rockcliffe Park

The original village of Rockcliffe Park, situated just west of Lowertown and Vanier, belonged to Thomas McKay, the Rideau Canal’s contractor; for many years, his widow lived in a stone mansion on the northern boundary of the village. Incorporated as a municipality to preserve its pastoral nature (and to hold back the building boom of the 1920s), it had only a score of permanent homes; otherwise, it was occupied by summer cottages and two private schools, Ashbury College (for boys, established 1910, whose students included actor Matthew Perry, among others), and Elmwood School for girls (established 1915, where author Elizabeth Smart attended).

Because of deliberate laws against buildings for any purpose “other than as a single detached family dwelling,” there are no apartments or businesses, meaning that there might be a lot of space for kids to play on the streets, but no doctor’s offices nor businesses to help pay taxes, which has caused Rockcliffe Park to have some of the highest property tax rates in the city. Despite becoming part of the Regional Municipality of Ottawa-Carleton in 1969, it still retained its status as a village, but was finally amalgamated into the City of Ottawa in 2001.

A Stately Manor

One of the earliest and most impressive buildings in Rockcliffe is the Apostolic Nunciature (724 Manor Ave.), home of the Pope’s representative in Canada. The huge structure is reminiscent of an English lord’s estate, and comes complete with an arched gate. Assessed at approximately $5.3 million in 2000, the mansion was built in 1838. It was dubbed “Rockcliff” for the limestone cliffs that border the Ottawa River. The village itself was later named in its honour. The mansion, also known as the Rockcliffe Manor House, was purchased by the Holy See in 1962.

Westboro

This neighbourhood has gradually developed into one of the trendiest in the city. Various shops, restaurants, and condos have begun to take over what was previously a lower-income area (including parts of Hintonburg, which was originally developed as a streetcar suburb for downtown civil servants, and Mechanicsville), inching eastward toward the O-Train line and Centretown. Some notable features of the area include Collected Works Bookstore and Coffeebar, “Elvis Lives” Lane (behind the infamous Newport Restaurant), and slight east, into Hintonburg (or …“Wellington Village”) The Carleton Tavern. In 2007, the Great Canadian Theatre Company opened their brand new building at the corner of Holland Avenue and Wellington Street.

LeBreton Flats

Captain John LeBreton was a decorated veteran of the War of 1812 who was severely wounded in the Battle of Lundy’s Lane (one of the deciding battles in the war). The area now known as LeBreton Flats was named for this war hero, who received a land grant in Bytown on the Ottawa River (where the present day neighbourhood of Britannia sits, farther west, by Brittania Beach off Carling Avenue).

When lands extending from Carling to the middle of the Ottawa and from Bronson Avenue to Booth Street were offered for auction in Brockville, Captain LeBreton bought the whole lot. This angered the Governor General, the Earl of Dalhousie, who refused to buy the land for the Crown at LeBreton’s price. Imagine: originally, LeBreton’s lands were considered prime for the Rideau Canal project, but LeBreton wanted too much money, moving Dalhousie’s plans farther east into Nicholas Sparks’ rocky lot (much of what is now home to Centretown from Wellington Street south, including west past current Bronson Avenue and east to the Rideau Canal). This helped Sparks to become the era’s only wealthy Irishman in town. In 1962, the Crown expropriated and bulldozed a portion of LeBreton’s land for a vast redevelopment program – that has yet to come to fruition – carving everything away down to Scott and Albert Streets to the south, and cutting Wellington Street off from itself (a sign now hangs in the area for “Old Wellington Street”). Somehow the small residential street known as lower Lorne Avenue, off Albert Street and just below Nanny Goat Hill, survived. In 2006, local residents fought back and won against renewed development, saying that unless the city designated the street a heritage conservation area, the turn-of-the-century homes would give way to suburban-style houses that they insist don’t belong there.

Thus, the houses on lower Lorne Avenue exist as the only example of what LeBreton Flats used to look like. In 2004, some development did start to appear, with the newly designed Canadian War Museum (see photo above) opening in 2005, and the promise of a series of apartment and government buildings where the Transitway meets Booth Street. But most of what has happened, yet again, is the removal of what was already thriving (a lovely campground, for example).

Old Ottawa South

Just below the Glebe (across the bridge over the Rideau, near Lansdowne Park, 1015 Bank Street), Old Ottawa South was, for years, literally the southernmost point in town until the natural growth of the city pushed what Ottawans consider “south” farther and farther away, now well past where the current O-Train (the city’s north-south light rail) stops. Some highlights include the Ottawa Folklore Centre, the Canadian Walk of Fame, Patty’s Pub, Mother Tongue Books, and a whole slew of antique stores, as well the flea-marketesque Ottawa Antique Market.

The Glebe

Ottawa’s oldest neighbourhood, the Glebe was originally surveyed in 1792, but didn’t have its first legitimate settler, George Patterson, Chief of the Canal Commissariat, until 1826 (Patterson Creek is named for him, and his house sits at the corner of Canal Street and Patterson Avenue). Predominantly a residential district and bordered by the canal, the Glebe amalgamated into Ottawa against the will of its citizens in the later part of the 19th century, and spent most of the 1980s and 90s becoming extremely gentrified. Home to various eating establishments and outdoor patios, bookstores, and coffeeshops, this area’s highlights include the Glebe Community Centre, the Canal Ritz restaurant, Carleton University, Octopus Books, and the SuperEx fair.

Lowertown

One of the oldest parts of the city, Lowertown (including the Byward Market, Sandy Hill, and the University of Ottawa campus) boasts century-old houses and parks, quiet residential homes, as well as various embassies (France, India, South Africa, Spain), and is the only original part of what is now the City of Ottawa that was originally subdivided for urban development (unlike the Glebe, for example). Lowertown is home to two of the city’s founding linguistic communities, French and English, where they have done business side by side for decades.

The Lowertown neighbourhood originally constituted the geographic divide between the upper class of New Edinburgh to the immediate east and the residents of the lower income Lowertown, which was predominantly settled by the Irish and French, many of whom arrived to do the grunt work that came with building a city. Lowertown was the flip side of the coin to the predominantly Protestant Uppertown (which explains the three large Catholic churches in close proximity), and became the centre for industrial power in 19th-century Bytown (what Ottawa was called prior to 1855). Many of the French Canadians of Lowertown were lumbermen who had been working for timber magnate Philemon Wright across the river in Hull to supply the Rideau Canal with wood and related materials. These workers’ homes, unlike the large stone residences that still exist in New Edinburgh and parts of Lowertown, were made of wood and have long since disappeared. Some of the highlights of Lowertown include various outdoor patios, clubs, and restaurants of the Byward Market; used bookstores and shops along Dalhousie Street; the Rideau Centre (Ottawa’s largest downtown shopping centre), the National Gallery of Canada, and various commercial art galleries.

Ottawa’s Centretown

Holding a great percentage of what could be called Ottawa’s downtown core, Centretown was originally the predominantly Scottish and English Presbyterian ying to Lowertown’s French and Irish Catholic yang. Centretown currently contains the Bank Street Promenade, Sparks Street, the Golden Triangle area east of Elgin Street, Ottawa’s own unofficial gay district (or official, depending on whom you ask), as well as Little Italy and Chinatown (now called “Somerset Heights”).

Some of Centretown’s highlights include a spectacular nightlife on a number of these main streets, depending on your tastes (see Nightlife chapter). Notable destinations include Barrymore’s Music Hall, the Currency Museum, the Museum of Nature, and, of course, the Parliament Buildings.