The Stony Monday Riots

Despite whatever mild-mannered reputation Ottawa may have, the city’s history is rife with roughneck tales of debauchery, riots, and malfeasance going back decades. Here are a few examples of tales seldom told that could easily change your mind about this city and its residents.

In the early 19th century, the construction of the Rideau Canal brought large numbers of recently arrived Irish Catholic labourers into the area. After the canal was completed, and with increased unemployment in the region, the Irish Catholics became restless and revived old animosities with the French, English, and Protestant Irish. A group of disgruntled Irish known as the Shiners began to wage campaigns against French raftsmen and the Protestant fraternal order the Orangemen, escalating from street fights and bar brawls to a series of assaults and murders in 1837 (this period of Ottawa Valley history, 1837-1845, became known as the “Shiners’ Wars”). The end of the Shiner terror came when their leader, Peter Aylen, left Ottawa for Aylmer after a series of particularly brutal attacks, but tensions among the various groups remained.

Most of the affluent Englishmen who lived in Uppertown (now Centretown) were Tories, while the French and Irish were Reformers. The Tories spent much of the 1840s incensed at the Reformist-minded politics of Lord Elgin, then Governor General of Canada. After riots started in Montreal, where Tories burnt down the Parliament Building located there, Elgin was prompted to look for another capital for Canada. When His Lordship announced plans to visit Bytown in September of 1849, the people of Lowertown began preparing a royal welcome. Uppertowners, meanwhile, argued that Elgin should be ignored, and a meeting was called in the Byward Market to discuss the situation. The gathering on September 17 erupted into another riot. Stones were thrown, mayhem broke out, and one person was shot on what became known as “Stony Monday.” The British militia was called in to block the Lowertowners from advancing into Uppertown the following day, and the riot was dispersed.

Origins of Ottawa General Hospital

In June 1847, a typhus epidemic broke out in Ottawa’s Lowertown very soon after the Sisters of Charity constructed the building that would eventually become Ottawa’s first General Hospital (being little more than a wooden house on St. Patrick Street at the time). The disease was thought to have been brought over with the thousands of Irish immigrants fleeing the Potato Famine. By the following May, 167 of the 619 people afflicted had died. The overflow of patients was quarantined on the west side of the Rideau Canal in wooden sheds, under boats, and in tents. Unfortunately, with all the fear of infection from typhus and smallpox, the last thing any of the residents of Sandy Hill wanted in their neighbourhood was a hospital of any kind, and as late as 1879, a couple of them were even burned down by locals. After the typhus epidemic had subsided, the Sisters purchased six lots at what is now Sussex Drive and Bruyère Street (previously Water Street) to build a new General Hospital, which was finally opened to patients in 1866.

Bytown Museum

Toward the locks, just down from the Fairmont Château Laurier and the Canadian Museum of Contemporary Photography is the Bytown Museum (234-4570), run by the Historical Society of Ottawa. Built during the winter of 1826–27 as the treasury and storehouse during the construction of the Rideau Canal, the museum is located in what is considered the oldest existing building in Ottawa, formally presented by the city to the Women’s Canadian Historical Society (precursor to the Historical Society) by Mayor Charlotte Whitton in 1951. The Historical Society, which currently meets monthly at the Routhier Community Centre in Lowertown, maintains over 1,500 volumes on early Bytown and Ottawa history in the museum. The reference library is available to the public, and open every Wednesday and Thursday between 10 a.m. and 2 p.m.– it is advised that you call ahead to confirm the librarian is available. The museum itself hosts regular programming throughout the year, including Winterlude events, Haunted March Break, and Canada Day tours; the website grants users a virtual tour if you can’t make it there in person.

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.

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.