Islands of Ottawa: Green Island a historical microcosm of the city
Bruce Deachman, Ottawa Citizen
Published on: August 19, 2015 | Last Updated: August 19, 2015 8:55 AM EDT
In the second in a series examining the area’s islands, Bruce Deachman digs into the soil of Green Island and comes up with what might well be a microcosm of the city as a whole: some cattle and farmland, a few lumber mills, a distillery and government. Oh, and monuments, too.
Located in the Rideau River where it empties into the Ottawa River, the 12-acre Green Island bisects the Rideau Falls and is accessible from Sussex Drive at its north end, and the 115-year-old Minto bridges — originally intended as a ceremonial route linking Rideau Hall to the Parliament Buildings via King Edward Avenue — to the south.
(After first seeing them in 1613, Samuel de Champlain completely oversold the falls: ” … it falls with such a vehemence from a height of 20 or 25 fathoms that it makes an overhanging curtain nearly 400 paces wide,” he wrote. In fact, the falls thunder down from a height of about five fathoms, or nine metres.)
The island was named for Patrick Green who quarried stone for the Rideau Canal and, in the 1830s, used the island’s fields for hay and pasture for his cattle. In 1808, Rice Honeywell leased Green Island and much surrounding land for 21 years. In 1828, a James Ferguson, from Scotland, lived and farmed on the island, although no evidence of any other industry there exists from that time. An 1826 painting of Rideau Falls by Thomas Burrowes reveals two figures fishing from the river, but no man-made structures of any kind.
When Honeywell’s lease expired, Colonel By ordered Ferguson off the island, and contracted a bridge to be built to it. Jean-Baptiste St-Louis built the first grist mill at the falls, in 1830. The island soon after became the property of stonemason and Ottawa founder/landowner Thomas McKay. McKay, who made his fortune building the first eight locks of the Rideau Canal and subsequently bought all the land that now comprises New Edinburgh and Rockcliffe Park, harnessed the industrial potential of the Rideau Falls, building saw mills, a grist mill, brewery and distillery, five-storey flour mill and cloth mill on the island. By 1843, however, the Ordnance department reported that it had received title to the island.
By 1864, Muley’s Saw Mill and Stave Factory was built on the island, and three years later a foundry was opened at the falls. It was in operation until 1922. W. C. Edwards Lumber Mills occupied Green Island in the 1930s.
Green Island was most famously the site of Ottawa’s City Hall from 1958 until the municipal amalgamation in 2001. The original eight-storey building was officially opened on Sat. Aug. 2, 1958 by Princess Margaret, two years after Ottawa mayor Charlotte Whitton turned the sod. The edifice replaced the temporary government buildings that had been built there in 1940 for the Dominion Bureau of Statistics (later Statistics Canada), as well as three city-operated baseball diamonds.
With its elegant marble spiral staircase leading from the lobby up to the mayor’s office and council chamber, Ottawa’s third city hall was the first building in Ottawa to be completely air-conditioned. Two sculptures of groups of birds in the front of the building, designed by Montreal sculptor Louis Archambault, served as ornamental fountains, but when the water was initially turned on, the basement flooded and people entering the building were soaked. Ten years later, $10,000 was appropriated to redesign the plumbing and spray nozzles.
Considered one of Canada’s most significant International Style buildings, it won the Massey Medal for design in 1959. It underwent considerable and controversial additions in the early 1990s by architect Moshe Safdie, who also designed Habitat 67 in Montreal and the National Gallery of Canada.
The building was known simply as City Hall (or, after 2001, Old City Hall) or by its street address, 111 Sussex Drive, until 2003, when the federal government bought the building and renamed it the John G. Diefenbaker Building. The building is now part of the Department of Foreign Affairs.
Green Island is also home to numerous commemorations. Most notable among them, perhaps, is the Ottawa Memorial, a large bronze globe erected by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission and Public Works Canada to honour the nearly 800 men and women, in active service or training with the Commonwealth air forces in Canada, the U.S. and Caribbean, who died during the Second World War and who have no known graves. It was officially opened in 1959 by the Queen.
Nearby is the Mackenzie-Papineau Monument, opened in 2001 and dedicated to the Mackenzie-Papineau Battalion, also known as the Mac-Paps or Brigadistas, the more than 1,500 Canadians who fought on the losing Republican side in the Spanish Civil War in the late 1930s. The monument features a five-metre-high sheet of steel, from which is cut the image of Prometheus raising his arm to the sun, and a 12-metre-long wall inscribed with the names of the Canadian volunteers.
The National Artillery Monument, originally unveiled in Major’s Hill Park in 1959, was moved to Green Island in 1997 as part of the NCC’s restructuring plan. With a large marble wall commemorating gunners killed in service, the memorial features a 25-pounder gun used by the Royal Canadian Regiment of Artillery during the Second World War and in Korea. In May of this year, a larger-than-life statue of John McCrae, marking the 100th anniversary of In Flanders Fields, was added to the monument.
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