Stopwatch Gang

The Stopwatch Gang, led by Ottawa’s own Paddy Mitchell (who grew up in Little Italy), Stephen Reid (of Massey, Ontario), and Lionel Wright, are perhaps Canada’s most infamous bank robbers. The trio, whose orchestrated meticulous heists never took longer than 90 seconds, robbed more than 100 banks and armoured cars during the 1970s and 80s in the United States and Canada. Their most notorious job was a 1974 gold heist (worth $750,000) at the Ottawa airport, earning themselves a place on the FBI’s most-wanted list. The gang’s exploits were detailed in several movies, including Point Break (1991) and The Heist (2001), as well as in the book The Stopwatch Gang (1992) by Toronto Sun reporter Greg Weston, and in Mitchell’s own memoir, This Bank Robber’s Life, which he wrote in prison and sold over the Internet. While still in jail, Reid wrote his own book, a semi-autobiographical novel titled Jackrabbit Parole. Through this book he met his editor, West Coast poet and writer Susan Musgrave, and in 1986 they married while he was still imprisoned. Upon his release a year later, he and Musgrave attempted to live a quiet life on Vancouver Island, and had a child as well. He appeared as a rifle-toting security guard in a 15-second cameo (as well as acting as the film’s bank heist consultant) in the independent movie Four Days (1999). Unfortunately, in the spring of 1999 in Victoria, BC, his heroin addiction resulted in a return to crime and a botched robbery and shootout; currently, Reid remains in prison. The leader of the gang, Patrick “Paddy” Mitchell, called “North America’s most famous, most successful and, especially, most likeable bank robber of our time” by his son, grew up on Preston Street in Ottawa, and died of cancer on in 2007 in a US prison while serving a 65-year sentence. Wright served his sentence, and according to a 2005 report from the CBC, worked as an accountant for Corrections Canada. The gold from the airport robbery in 1974 was never recovered.

Queer Ottawa

The first march for gay and lesbian rights on Parliament Hill on August 28, 1971 was far less violent than the infamous 1969 Stonewall riots in the US, but no less important. It marked the dawn of the modern gay and lesbian movement in Canada, and very specifically, in Ottawa. That day, about 100 gay men and lesbians walked through the rain to announce their demands to Parliament. Key players included the Gay Day Committee of Toronto Gay Action, who, a week before the march, presented the federal government with a brief called “We Demand,” which included calls to create uniform heterosexual and homosexual age of consent and allow gays to serve in the military.

In Gary Kinsmen’s book The Regulation of Desire, he talks about how the federal government worked very hard to regulate homosexuality through a series of national security campaigns conducted by the RCMP during the 1950s and 60s. According to Kinsmen, RCMP agents would set up camp in the basement tavern of the Lord Elgin Hotel, one of Ottawa’s oldest gay hangouts, and take photographs of gay men through holes cut in newspapers. Despite this, a large network of closeted men and women existed in the capital, congregating at private dinner parties and weekend cottage gatherings.

Ottawa’s first gay organization was formed in 1971, when seven men met at the home of Maurice Bélanger and Michael Black, calling themselves Gays of Ottawa. The group rented office space on the sixth floor of Pestalozzi College, a free-thinking institution located in an apartment building at Rideau and Chapel Streets.

During the 1970s, gay men in Ottawa were so besieged, their experience was referred to as the “Ottawa witch hunt,” but while police surveillance, harassment, and arrest of gays in local parks increased, many charges (of gross indecency) were thrown out of the courts. A number of those arrested—many who had not yet come out to friends, family, or co-workers—had the added devastation of having their names published by the media. This led one man, Warren Zufelt, to commit suicide in 1979 on the day his name was mentioned in local newspapers as one of 18 men arrested in an Ottawa “sex scandal.” NDP MLA for Ottawa Centre Michael Cassidy, reacting to Zufelt’s death, wrote to the Minister of Justice and the Minister of Labour to
protest police persecution of gays and called for the inclusion of “sexual orientation” in the Ontario Human Rights Code; after years of debate, protests, and campaigns, it was finally included on December 2, 1986.

Elvis lives in West End Ottawa

Don’t let anyone tell you different: Ottawa is the place where the King of Rock ‘n’ Roll retired. One of Ottawa’s institutions, Moe’s World Famous Newport Restaurant in Westboro, at the corner of Churchill Avenue and Richmond Road, is owner Moe Attalah’s tribute to Elvis Presley.

Once you walk through the convenience store, past the snacks and newspapers, the Newport provides high quality, standard American-style fare, including homestyle burgers, pizza, and fish and chips.

It’s also the official headquarters of the Elvis Sighting Society (check out the Elvis Lives Lane street sign outside, officially designated by city council). Elvis memorabilia covers most of the inside space, and Attalah claims to receive mail for the King from all over the world (that he refuses to open).

The Newport and Elvis Sighting Society also hosts a number of community events, including a Christmas dinner. Watch for the Douvris Martial Arts Academy next door, with the sign that claims: “Elvis trains here.” Fun facts about the historic Newport are written on their menu; check out the one about American President Bill Clinton’s mother, when she came to visit. 334 Richmond Rd., 722-9322

Birth of the Mulligan

A “Mulligan” is a golf term that refers to a “do-over,” or free shot to substitute for a mistake. But who was the original “Mulligan,” the lax linksman who gave the shot its name?

Turns out it was David Bernard Mulligan, who during the 1920s ran the Lord Elgin Hotel on Elgin Street for a while before moving to the United States. Originally born in Pembroke, Ontario, Mulligan was a member of a number of clubs, including the St Lambert Country Club in Quebec. A real comedian, he insisted on repeating failed swings during his games, and for whatever reason, he not only got away with it, it also became a running joke.

Thomas Fuller: Architect of Parliament

Born in Bath, England, Thomas Fuller was trained in the office of architect James Wilson and was, by his twenties, the designer of the Anglican cathedral in Antigua in the West Indies. By 1855, he had his own firm and designed the town hall at Bradford-on-Avon. Soon after, he won the competition to design the new Parliament Buildings in Ottawa. He later became Chief Architect to the Dominion of Canada, designing hundreds of buildings in Canada and the United States, including the New York State Capitol in Albany, the San Francisco City Hall, and the All Saints’ Anglican Church at 347 Richmond Road (built in 1865). Fuller died in 1898 and was returned to his family in Ottawa (he was buried in Beechwood Cemetery), where some of his descendants run one of the city’s leading construction firms, Thomas Fuller Construction.

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.