720 Echo Drive – The Enduring Stones of Time

Posted by: Jean-Claude Dubé

720 Echo Drive: photo by Jean-Claude Dubé

A recent Home for the Holidays house tour highlighted, amongst others, a beautiful nearly century-old house with river stone walls at 720 Echo Drive. The lot upon which this house is build was originally part of an estate owned by George Hay, a successful 19th century hardware store owner who later became president of the Bank of Ottawa. His house, a designated heritage building from the 19th century, still stands at 700 Echo Drive.

The entire area within the confines of Bank Street, Echo Drive, Riverdale, and Sunnyside Avenues was owned by George Hay and Thomas McKay, a miller and nephew of Thomas McKay, the founder of New Edinburgh. Thomas McKay’s estate fronted Bank Street and extended eastward between Echo Drive and Sunnyside to the present and extended easterly boundary of the Royal Canadian College of Physicians and Surgeons’ property. This is also known as the former monastery of the contemplative religious order of the Sisters of the Precious Blood. The rest of the land, an odd-shaped quadrangle, was George Hay’s property.

After George Hay’s death in 1910, followed by the death of his first son, also named George Hay, in 1911, the estate was subdivided in a great number of lots on Echo Drive, Riverdale and Sunnyside Avenues. The executor was the Toronto General Land Corporation and the Ontario Land Surveyor was S.E. Farley. These lots were put on sale late in 1911, marketed as Lansdowne Heights.

Mary A. Munsie, a spinster and seamstress living at 43 Aylmer Ave (then Dufferin Ave) purchased the 720 Echo Drive lot on January 22, 1913. Miss Munsie was the daughter of Sergeant James Munsie who owned the city block between Barton and Grosvenor streets, north of Aylmer Avenue. Currently, the Colonel By Residence for Seniors is located there. In the late 19th century, Sergeant Munsie had been the keeper of a wooden railroad swing bridge over the Rideau Canal at the location where the present day O-train travels underground between Carleton University and the Experimental Farm. At the time, this swing bridge was popularly known as the Munsie Bridge.

Mary Munsie was the only child of James and Amy Munsie. She lived alone in her father’s stone house at 43 Aylmer after he passed away in 1900. That house was also the first location of the Ottawa South branch of the then Carnegie Library. Miss Munsie was appointed seamstress to the Governor General’s wife and had a shop on Sparks Street, the major commercial area of Ottawa of the time. She retired and sold her house to Robert G. Graham in 1922. Living with a cousin in Lanark County, she passed away in 1936 and was buried alongside her parents in the Merivale Cemeteries on Merivale Road in Ottawa.

Robert Graham, a native of Oxford Station, Grenville County in Ontario, had been the principal of Gananoque High School for 25 years. When he purchased 720 Echo Drive, he was the Chief Inspector of the Income Tax Division of the Department of Revenue, then known as the Business Profits War Tax Commission of the Department of Finance. A Gold Medallist of Victoria College of the University of Toronto, Robert Graham was a Mason and a member of the Ancient Order of Work Workmen as well as the Independent Order of Oddfellows. When he passed away in 1927, he left two daughters, one being Mrs F.G. Salichs of Havana, Cuba. His wife passed away in 1925.

George Cameron, a merchant who had a store selling fixtures and fittings at 191 Sparks St. in Ottawa, purchased the house from the Graham children in 1930. When he passed away in 1942, he left substantial wealth to his wife Jessie and his two children, Robert and Georgina.

Mrs Jessie Cameron was still living in 1974 when the house’s ownership was transferred to her daughter Georgina and her husband Robert Shirreff whom Georgina had married in 1951.

Robert Shirreff was a descendant of Charles Shirreff, the founder of Fitzroy Harbour on the Ottawa River, west of Ottawa. Born in Fitzroy Harbour, he was living with his widowed mother at 692 Echo Drive. A civilian RCMP management specialist, Robert and Georgina Shirreff retired to Fitzroy Harbour in the 1980’s where Robert had restored the Charles Shirreff log house homestead built in 1858. George Shirreff (aka John Shirreff) passed away in 2006.

Georgina and Robert Shirreff sold the house at 720 Echo Drive to Eva Devine, a real estate agent, in 1989 and Mrs. Devine sold the house for a profit to Robert Montague, a lawyer, in 1990.

It should be noted that the street address of 720 Echo Drive was formerly 744 Echo Drive about 1929 when house numbers on Echo Drive between Riverdale and Bank were re-assigned. When Robert Graham had passed away in 1927, his obituary in the Ottawa Citizen described his residence as 744 Echo Drive.

Originally published in the December 2011 OSCAR.

See the 1911 St. Germain and Fraas real estate ads for Lansdowne Heights: