Posted by: Marilyn Brown
I was born in Old Ottawa South in 1936 and lived in a house at the corner of Riverdale and Sunnyside. I was the second youngest in a family of three boys and three girls. Shortly after my birth we moved to Rosedale Avenue, still in Old Ottawa South. It was a small street, which ran between Sunnyside Avenue and the Driveway.
When I started school it was at St. Margaret Mary Catholic School on Bellwood Avenue. It was a very small school, having only four classrooms. Grade 1 in one in a room; grades two, three and four in another; grades five and six in another; and yet another room for grades seven and eight. Two lay teachers and two Sisters of Charity nuns taught us. The lay teachers were Miss McSheffrey in grade one and Miss Wheeler for grades two, three and four. Grades five and six had a wonderful nun, Sister St. Basil, who would skip with us. But then came grades seven and eight and Sister Mary Inez. Those were the worst two years of my life! I suppose that having taught four of the other Dancey (the author’s maiden name) clan members before me may have caused her temper.
One of the exciting parts of going to school back then was cutting through Hopewell School yard as a short cut and having the Protestant kids chase you. Another bit of excitement was walking to or from school in winter because horses pulled the sidewalk plows! If you heard one snort right behind you, or felt it’s hot breath on your head (even if only imagined), you could make it home in record time.
Of course television was not in our lives so we had to create our own entertainment. In fall, we would either make piles of leaves to jump in, or at the Driveway make leaf outlines of rooms of a house and play house. In winter, besides skating, another game we played was climbing and sliding down snowbanks (snowbanks were really huge since they didn’t have snow dumps). We would also climb up on garage roofs and jump off into the deep snow (something my brother – five years my senior taught me). Or we would make snow forts (igloo type) which terrified my mother as she thought they might collapse on us. (She never knew about the garage roofs).
Our neighbour, whose backyard faced ours, was an avid golfer. He had erected a huge semi-circle canvas half tent in order to practice his golf shots. While he was at work we used it as a stage. My mother had made various costumes for the many school plays we were in. If we couldn’t use those, it was her dresses and high heels, or Butternut tree branches and ferns were always plentiful for Hawaiian costumes.
We also had the beaches in the summer. Along the Rideau River there was Bathing Island (near Brewer Park), Brighton Beach (at the end of Brighton Avenue) but it cost a whole dime to get in, so we didn’t go there unless we could sneak in. Then there was Brantwood Beach in Ottawa East and further along, Dutchies Hole in Sandy Hill. The next actual beach was in New Edinburgh but it was too far – on the other side of St. Patrick’s Street Bridge. It was also too close to Eastview (now Vanier) and my mother wouldn’t allow us to go there. Our schools would also occasionally take us to one of the few indoor pools, such as Plante Bath.
Bathing Island was an actual little island. They would put up a wooden footbridge that we crossed from the Brewer Park side to get to the changing houses. The beach had two wooden piers at either side (the right hand side had too many weeds) and log “booms” to keep poor swimmers from going in too deep. On the Brewer Park side of the footbridge, there was an old raft tethered in the water that we all loved playing on. There were also swings, slides, picnic tables and a little shack where the playground supervisors would hand out checkers, games, bean bags, volleyballs and so on.
My brother Cliff would take me exploring down a wooded lane beyond Brewer Park towards what he said was the dump. There was a family there that lived in an old streetcar. Beyond this was an old graveyard — possibly from some of the settlers who were granted land after Colonel By’s completion of the Canal. This would probably be in the area of where Carleton University is now. I was only about six or seven, so graveyards were pretty scary places —especially when the stones were cracked, dark gray, falling over, etc. There were also what Cliff called tramps or hobos. He knew one personally — old Scotty, who would invite us in, give us hot cocoa and porridge or soup (whatever he had cooking on his old wood stove) and tell Cliff stories while I played with his many cats and dogs.
In winter, we had some good skating rinks such as Brewer Park — lights, shacks with pot-bellied stoves and music. Also there was Hopewell Rink, which was across from Hopewell School and Glen Avenue. It also had shacks, stoves, lights and music. Of course my brother and his friends would usually make a rink up at the end of our street on the Canal, so we would go there occasionally as well. In those days there were many small rinks made by ambitious youngsters along the Canal (we didn’t have the whole Canal for skating like it is now). There were also some pretty fair hills for tobogganing and sledding on the Driveway. One of them was MacDonald’s Hill behind the old Perley Hospital (now Colonel By Retirement Residence). We called it this because the MacDonald family lived nearby. There was also Seneca Hill, which had been steep, but has now been bulldozed down to a “bump.” Apparently it was blocking the view of motorists when traffic became heavier, causing a lot of accidents. There was also “Haunted Hill” at the Experimental Farm. I don’t know why it was called that and I refused to listen to my brothers’ and sisters’ explanations (too scared to find out).
Some summer weekends my Dad would take my two brothers and myself out in the canoe. We would start at the top of Rosedale, paddling west under Bronson Bridge, which in those days was a swing bridge. This meant if cars were heading North or South on Bronson at the Canal when a large boat was going by, a gate would come down to stop them. Mr. Ethier, who was the Bridge Master, would have to manually turn the gears to swing open the bridge to allow the boat passage. He had kids that went to our school, Madeline and Amie. After Bronson Bridge, we would portage the two or three locks to Hogs Back, then continue to Black Rapids where we would turn around and head back.
Each spring, we had horrible floods. The land on the west side of Bronson between the Driveway and the present Carleton University was all bush and swamp. The floods would affect every street from the Driveway, Aylmer, Sunnyside, Hopewell, Glen, Grove, and Cameron and would almost reach Seneca Street. It was bad all along River Road too, from Hogs Back, Billings Bridge, Hurdman Bridge, Cummings Bridge, etc. Our parents would take us to see how bad the floods were as one of my aunts lived on Sunnyside between Seneca and Bronson.
Once I was older, about ten or eleven, some of my friends and I used to walk to Hogs Back. Sometimes we would choose to go the Driveway route taking us by Bronson Bridge. We would pass a little hamburger-hot dog stand called the Sunset Inn (it had “The Best” ice cream!). Passing the Hartwell Locks, etc. there were a few cottages which seemed to be up a hill on the left hand side of the road along the Canal, and we would eventually reach Hogs Back.
Other times, we would take the Billings Bridge route. Of course, there was nothing but the old River Road and bush. There were a few cottages as we got closer to Hogs Back. There were houses on the south side of River Road between Billings Bridge and Hurdman Bridge, but they must have been expropriated to create the greenspace which is now far extended to the present Riverside Drive.
Another of our walks would take us along the Canal route passing Bronson Bridge to the railroad tracks on the south east side of Dows Lake. We would walk north on the tracks over the old rail bridge with the open ties. Once across, we could walk the wide flat booms on this side of the lake, or follow a path to our left until we reached the apple orchard of the Experimental Farm. It was beautiful in the spring with the apple blossoms.
There was no recycling as there is now but we had the “ragman” with his horse pulling his old wagon while he called out “Rags for Sale.” You could sell him old pots and pans, wine bottles, old clothes (the ones Mom hadn’t cut down to make over for my younger brother or myself). The milkman, the baker and the iceman (we had Ice Boxes instead of fridges) all made their deliveries by horse drawn wagons. Our baker, Carson, had the nicest horse named Laddie. If we were coming home from school and saw Laddie waiting for the baker, we would pat his nose, feed him some grass and he would follow us home. The poor baker was always looking for Laddie, luckily he was a very good-natured man.
I also remember “Ration Books,”where all families would receive a certain amount of coupons for things that were in short supply during and just after the war. The neighbours and Mom would do a lot of trading – like jams for sugar (if you made your own jam) etc. Mom would also buy some groceries and send me with packages to the Sisters at the Precious Blood Convent on our side of the Driveway just east of Bank Street. I would usually get some of my friends to come with me. A nun would open a gate that still would not allow full view. I would put the parcel in and she would turn the revolving tray to take it. We would then walk a long hall to the Chapel, all the while listening to the haunting hymns being sung by the nuns. Half way to the Chapel was a huge statue of Jesus on the Cross. Then, in the Chapel, my best friend Joan would always sit on the kneeling benches (which did look a little like weird chairs with high backs and real low seats). Of course this would start us all howling with laughter and we would have to leave.
The movies were another exciting part of my growing up. Dad took my brother Cliff and I to the Avalon Theatre (in the Glebe) when I was about three to see Pinocchio. I was so frightened when the whale part came on we had to leave. I guess that’s why my brother was always kind of hard on me later. Our best show was the Mayfair Theatre (still there). It was close and was ten cents to get in on Saturdays. We would see “News of the World,” cartoons, serials (which were real cliffhangers so we had to return the following week to catch the next episode) and the main feature. All of the theatres would have different give-away features – collect a set of dishes, etc., for women who attended the evening attractions. We thought it was the end of the world the Saturday they raised the price to twelve cents.
Heading uptown from Sunnyside on Bank there was the Mayfair, the Avalon, the Rialto, the Imperial (I think it is now Barrymores) around the corner from Bank – the Somerset, the Capitol (this was a beautiful Hollywood-type theatre ) and last, the Regent at Sparks. There were many other movie theatres in Ottawa.
Putting this all on paper has certainly brought back some fond memories. Unfortunately due to the loss of my two older brothers and two older sisters in the past few years, it makes it hard for me to verify the exact locations of some of my adventures. One positive event occurred lately. When my daughter and I bought our present house in 1995, I discovered my best friend from childhood (the “kneeling bench sitter” Joan) lives just across the street.
I hope anyone who reads this (my age group or other) will get as much pleasure as it has given me to write it.
Originally published in the April 2003 OSCAR.
For more stories about Old Ottawa South’s past, see the collection of articles by the Ottawa South History Project.