Historic Embassies

Being the nation’s capital, Ottawa is home to a variety of international embassies. A good number of them exist in downtown office buildings, but here are a few older embassies that are housed in their own historic sites around the city.

Brunei Darussalam:

This large house at 395 Laurier Avenue East was built in 1871 by lumber baron John A. Cameron, who rented it out first to Joseph-Edouard Cauchon, who would become Speaker of the Canadian Senate. His wife named the residence “Stadacona Hall,” using the indigenous people’s name for Quebec City. Another notable couple who resided here was Sir John A. Macdonald, Canada’s first Prime Minister, and his wife. After World War II, the building was purchased by Belgium to house their ambassador, and finally sold in the 1990s for the sake of downsizing to the Government of Brunei, who uses it as its High Commission.

France:

Acquired in the 1930s, this property at 42 Sussex Drive was once owned by Robert Blackburn, one of New Edinburgh’s earliest merchants, a Member of Parliament, a founder of the Ottawa City Passenger Railway Company in 1866, and the man after whom Blackburn Hamlet (a small neighbourhood that currently sits just west of Orléans) was named. Designed by Parisian architect Eugène Beaudouin, the granite structure was built between 1936 and 1939. On the front lawn, in a small artificial pool, sits a miniature of La Grande Hermione, explorer Jacques Cartier’s ship.

Russia:

On New Year’s Day, 1956, the building at 285 Charlotte Street caught fire. Despite the fact that the structure was burning brightly, embassy staff refused entry to the fire department, even as officials were desperately removing secret documents from the building. Worried that the fire would spread to adjoining buildings, the fire department persisted. Finally a call was placed to Mayor Charlotte Whitton, who soon arrived at the site. After intense negotiations in the middle of Charlotte Street between the Mayor and the Soviet Ambassador, Dmitri S. Chuvanin, the fire department was finally granted entry, but by then it was far too late.A few days after the fire, at least half a dozen other ambassadors made a point of telling Whitton that if their embassies caught fire, they would certainly allow entry to the firefighters. Soviet officials moved temporarily to 24 Blackburn Avenue until a new embassy was built on their vacant property, about a year after the fire. South Africa: In a house built in 1840, this embassy at 15 Sussex Drive sits directly across from the official residence of the Prime Minister. James Stevenson, Bytown’s first agent of the Bank of Montreal, lived there for some years, as did industrialist Moss Kent Dickinson, known as “King of the Rideau”; he was also the Mayor of Ottawa from 1864 to 1866.

United States:

This monolith at 490 Sussex Drive that blocks the view down Clarence Street toward Parliament Hill was built a few years ago as part of an exchange between the US and Canada. Originally wanting to move the US embassy’s new location to somewhere farther outside the downtown area, Canadian officials finally relented and allowed for construction on Sussex Drive after American officials permitted the new Canadian embassy in Washington (which was also outgrowing its previous digs) to take up residence in a particularly attractive historic building they had their eyes on.