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We filled the virtual bleachers on the evening of Wednesday, April 9th, 2025 as we watched Steve Rennie start for the Historical Society of Ottawa. Steve is a baseball writer and researcher who lives in Ottawa. A former journalist, he is the president of the Ottawa-Gatineau and Eastern Ontario chapter of the Society for American Baseball Research (SABR). In the spring of 2024, he presented on Ottawa’s early baseball history at the Frederick Ivor-Campbell 19th Century Base Ball Conference in Cooperstown, New York. He has a particular interest in 19th…
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If you didn’t have a chance to hop aboard Black History Ottawa’s excellent bus tour last summer then grab a seat now. The Historical Society of Ottawa is proud to partner with Black History Ottawa for a virtual re-creation of the tour. The bus leaves on Wednesday, February 12, 2025 at 19:00, or anytime through the link below. Our driver tonight is Jean-Marie Guerrier. Jean-Marie is a cardiology technologist at the Ottawa Heart Institute. He is a member of the Board of Flo’s Seniors Health and Care Programs Network and has…
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We began our speaker session of March 22, 2025 at the Main Branch of the Ottawa Public Library on a somber note as Ben Weiss informed us of the unexpected death of Jamie Bramburger who had been our guest speaker just one month earlier. All of us at the Historical Society of Ottawa extend our condolences to Jamie’s family, friends and colleagues. As March 7, 2025 marked the 225th anniversary of the arrival of Philemon Wright and his party to this area, we were pleased to welcome Rick Henderson, a…
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The weather on that evening, Sunday, December 27th 1942 was miserable. The Ottawa Valley was hit with a mix of snow, sleet, and freezing rain as the local 550 train made its way from Petawawa toward Ottawa. Mist rising from the rivers and the blackout, necessitated by the war added to the darkness. By contrast, it was a beautiful Saturday afternoon, February 22nd, 2025 when almost 60 of us gathered at the Main Branch of the Ottawa Public Library to hear Jamie Bramburger relate the tragic story of the wreck…
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Thursday, 20 March 2025 21:33
The Story of Us - The History of the Women’s Canadian Historical Society of Ottawa
Dave Kent
On the evening of Wednesday, October 9, 2024, the Historical Society of Ottawa delved into its own past with an exploration of the early decades of the Women’s Canadian Historical Society of Ottawa (WCHSO) and the remarkable women who formed and ran it. We were pleased to again welcome Connie Wren-Gunn, who reprised the session she had presented at our 125th Birthday Bash in the summer of 2023. Connie is a professional historian, being the Director, Content & Interpretative Products for Know History. She holds an M.A. in History from…
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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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