Fleet Street Pumping Station

Located in an unassuming grey building in LeBreton Flats under Old Wellington Street is the Fleet Street Pumping Station. Opened in 1875 as Ottawa’s first pumping station, it directs unfiltered water from the Ottawa River into the city’s supply system. At first, it used the energy of Chaudiere Falls to force untreated water into the system, until 1915 when an electric motor-driven station was built on Lemieux Island; a complete water purification plant was constructed in 1932. The station was built on the heels of a number of health epidemics in the Ottawa area, significantly reducing the amount of illness once city residents finally had access to clean drinking water.

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).