Heritage Essay
Reflecting on Old Ottawa South’s Built Environment, Past and Present (cont.)
Although there is much that is positive about Old Ottawa South, the area still faces its share of challenges. It underwent difficult times and a few negative developments even though it generally has managed to get through them in good form. Parts of Old Ottawa South had experienced a period of relative and limited decline during the period extending from the end of World War II up to the 1980s as a result of the flight of city residents to outer suburbs ranging from neighboring Alta Vista to those located outside the Ottawa Greenbelt such as Kanata and Barrhaven. An indication of this is that enrollment in the Hopewell Avenue Public School went down to 399 students for the 1979 – 1980 school year, which is only 37 students more than the number of students enrolled in the original eight-room building when it opened in 1911 (see, Hopewell Avenue Public School, 75th Anniversary Yearbook – 1984 / 85 (Ottawa: Hopewell Parents and Teachers Organization and the Hopewell Avenue School Student Council, 1985)). Old Ottawa South, however, clearly has overcome these difficult times. The decline has been reversed and many today are seeking residences in the neighborhood. In fact, demand for housing seems to outstrip supply.
The area underwent a few negative developments, but their overall effects fortunately have been of a limited effect. A level of community vigilance nonetheless needs to be maintained to ensure that similar developments do not take place again in the future. One of those was the widening of Sunnyside Avenue, between Bank and Bronson, in 1971 to accommodate increased and speedier automobile traffic along it. This resulted in tearing 21 mature trees located along the street and narrowing the sidewalk zones flanking it (see, Leo Doyle, “A Walk on the Sunnyside,” The Oscar, May 2008, p. 21). Tearing down trees is always a most unfortunate act on both the visual and environmental levels. On the social level, this scarring of the street has negatively affected it as a space for social interaction that involved neighbors walking along the tree-lined (and shaded) sidewalk and socializing with residents sitting on their front porches. In addition, a few tragic accidents involving automobiles running over pedestrians have taken place along the street since then. In the final result, a decent example of a neighborhood street was obliterated, and a positive model of street-based social interaction was brought to an end. As Leo Doyle has stated, “Sunnyside is still recovering.”
Another unfortunate development to have taken place in the community is the tearing down of the St. Margaret Mary School on Bellwood Avenue. The school, which was constructed during the 1930s, was closed down in 2002, and subsequently sold to a developer, who razed the school building and constructed on its location a high-end residential complex.[6] The new housing development may fit well within its context on both the architectural and urban levels, and it adds new housing units to a residential neighborhood. What has taken place, however, is that a public space and building as well as a public institution that had served the community for decades has been lost forever, and a private development has taken its place.
[6] Regarding the destruction of St. Margaret Mary School, see, Joanne Currie, “Searching for common ground on 88 Bellwood,” The Oscar, October 2004, p. 1. Leo Doyle also had produced a short documentary film on the fate of the school.