Stories

Do you remember these businesses? Wong Brothers Fruit Store, 757 Bank Street, 1927-1997 The Avalon Theatre (later the Glebe Theatre), 742 Bank Street, 1928-1956 The Handy Shoe Repair Shop, 1152 Bank Street 1940-1959 If so, your participation is requested for a study on Bank Street workplaces.

The April 1979 OSCAR contained an article by Lindsay Suthren in which Mr. George Seal of Bellwood Avenue reminisced… “about his childhood in Ottawa South. He can remember the sounds of tennis playing on the four courts of the Sunnyside Tennis Club which was situated in the ravine behind St. Margaret Mary's Church, formerly Calvin Presbyterian Church. Tennis was very popular as was canoeing. There were a number of canoe clubs on the Rideau River and on the Canal within the Ottawa South area.”[1] Tennis boomed in Ottawa in the 1920s. Many clubs – St. James, All Saints, St. Alban’s, and St. Joseph’s – were linked to churches and in 1924 Calvin Presbyterian Church at Sunnyside and Fairbairn acquired enough land behind the church to build six double tennis courts; in fact, only four courts were built.[2]