This post was written by a friend of mine, Emma Kent. Emma is an artist and historian, with particular interests in local Otawa history, and Girl Guides of Canada history. Her projects can be seen on her website, here. Her exploration of Ottawa can be followed on instagram @hometownbytown
As someone who doesn't drive, I would love to live in a more walkable community with a great public transportation system. As the LRT expands, I feel like we are getting closer to the goal. Ottawa feels like a town meant to have a rail system and it's been amazing to see how the city is shaping the new system. However, it's also really neat to look back in Ottawa's history and see how another rail system, decades before, shaped the same spaces. Like most people in Ottawa, I have grown up without the streetcars, but in certain parts of the city, I can feel their echoes.
The place where I first encountered the mark left behind by the streetcars was at the Trolley Station at Britannia Park. Now a picnic shelter, this station once connected Britannia beach to downtown through the Ottawa Electric Railway Company's line. The beach, still a popular summer destination, was once home to an amusement park. Prior to the First World War and inspired by the success of Coney Island, amusement parks began opening at the end of streetcar lines for working-class families. However, once more families began to own their own cars the draw of the parks faded as families now had the freedom to explore beyond the streetcar lines. The last streetcar rode into Britannia in 1959 and the beach is now fully encircled by the city that once considered it a remote cottage community, but we still have the trolley station to remind us of this Ottawa tale.
Last spring, I started going for walks to help fill my time and my favourite route involved walking along Churchill Ave. The street is long and straight but it was the sidewalk that made this the ideal walking route as it appears to be two or three times as thick as normal so if you cross paths with anyone it is easy to stay socially distant from them. I doubt I would have noticed this without covid and it wasn't until I read 'As I Walked About' by Phil Jenkins that I learned that the street used to have part of a streetcar line which explained its unusual layout. I love learning these little facts about Ottawa, and I can't help but wonder where else the city's landscape has been shaped by the echo left behind by the streetcars, even if it's as little as a sidewalk.
Driving to Westboro, there was always this weirdly shaped piece of land that caught my eyes. I'm not even sure when I found out that it was a public park rather than just some land between the road. Byron Linear Park is a long narrow strip of land that was once a right-of-way for one of the streetcar lines. Hintonburg welcomed its first streetcar in 1895 and for fifty-nine years this part was part of the residents' daily commutes. When the line was removed in the mid-1950s, the area was turned into a community green space running 2.5 km in length and varying between five and fifteen meters in width. As the second phase of the LRT rolls out, the park is currently closed and soon a new track system will run underneath. Bryon Linear Park, as well as the rest of Ottawa's history with rail, is far from over.
