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Given that our 1st English language presentation of our 2024 / 2025 series fell on September 11, it was most appropriate that our guest that night, Peter McBride, spoke about the contrast between fire fighting in Bytown and early Ottawa, as compared to fire fighting in Ottawa today. Peter is the President of the Bytown Fire Brigade, with whom we were proud to partner for this evening’s presentation. Chief McBride is a 32 year veteran of the Ottawa Fire Department, a registered safety professional, and a passionate advocate of Fire…
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The Main Branch of the Ottawa Public Library welcomed us back on Saturday, September 28, a beautiful fall afternoon, for our first in-person English language Speaker Session of the 2024 / 2025 series. We were pleased to partner with the Workers History Museum for this presentation and honoured to have their President, David Dean, on hand to introduce our guest speaker. Brian McDougall describes himself as a “socialist historian”, one who asks different questions and so draws different conclusions than main-stream historians. David Dean described Brian as a former civil…
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A record crowd of 130 came to hear Paul Couvrette’s Historical Society of Ottawa presentation on the Karsh brothers which was held at the Main Branch of the Ottawa Public Library on the afternoon of April 27, 2024. Paul, a celebrated Ottawa photographer, was both a professional colleague and family friend of the two Karsh brothers. Paul also has the distinction of having photographed all the Prime Ministers from Trudeau to Trudeau, and of being called upon to give photography lessons to Her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth II, so she could…
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Wednesday, 01 May 2024 05:42
How Immigration Has Shaped Ottawa’s Cultural Mosaic - Part III
Dave Kent
Another good crowd gathered at the Sunnyside Branch of the Ottawa Public Library on Saturday, April 20, 2024 to listen to the third and regrettably final installment of Phil Jenkins’ lecture series on four immigrant groups in Ottawa. In this session, Phil completed his discussion of the Chinese community and went on to talk about the role of the Italian community in Ottawa. Phil highlighted two of the most famous members of Ottawa’s Chinese community before concluding this part with a brief discussion of the community as it exists today.…
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Ottawa is one big graveyard! Cemeteries are peaceful. Some like to stroll among the dearly departed to get away from the noise and chatter of daily life. Historians, on the other hand walk among the graves hoping that the tombstones will tell a story of those below. I feel the same way when I walk the streets of Centretown, Lowertown, Sandy Hill, and Hintonburg. Old houses are my memorials to the past. Big or small, elaborate or modest, Ottawa’s houses of the 19th and early 20th century tell us how…
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We were excited to gather again at the Sunnyside Branch of the Ottawa Public Library on Saturday, April 13, 2024, to hear the second installment of Phil Jenkins’ lecture series dealing with the contributions of four immigrant communities to Ottawa. In this section, Phil would complete his discussions on the Jewish community and introduce us to the history of the Chinese community in Ottawa. The audience was delighted when Phil chose to continue his history of the Jewish community in Ottawa with his guitar and a rendition of the Leonard…
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Monday, 15 April 2024 07:05
Paupers, Peddlers, Purveyors and Parishioners - Ottawa’s Jewish Community
David Martin
In this presentation to the Ottawa Historical Society, historian David C. Martin takes us back to the real beginnings of Ottawa’s Jewish community. At the core of David’s thesis is the notion that the immigrant pioneers of Ottawa’s Jewish community ‘conserved’ and ‘adapted’ in equal measure, bringing with them the rituals and traditions of their homelands while simultaneously planting their roots in Ottawa prior to the outbreak of World War I. Beginning with an overview of the city’s demographics during what he calls the “First Golden Age” of Jewish life…
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On the 6 th of April, 2024, the Historical Society of Ottawa in conjunction with the Sunnyside Branch of the Ottawa Public Library was pleased to present the first of a three part lecture series by noted historian, author, columnist and musician, Phil Jenkins. This is the third such series that Phil has given and this one is focussed on four immigrant communities that settled in and helped to build Ottawa. This session covered the contributions of the Irish community along with an introduction to Jewish settlement in the area.…
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It was just coincidental, though perhaps entirely appropriate, that the presentation on March 23, 2024, at the Main branch of the Ottawa Public Library titled “Ottawa Women on Ice” took place against the backdrop of the World Figure Skating Championships in Montreal and a game between Ottawa and Toronto in the newly-formed Professional Women’s hockey League. James Powell, the speaker that afternoon, told an enthusiastic audience of 44 about Ottawa’s lengthy and often glorious history in women’s hockey and the achievements of two Ottawa women in figure skating—Barbara Ann Scott…
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