We recently received a request to look into Sandy Hill's Besserer Street. It's not one of the most noticeable streets in town. Even though it outlines the northern edge of Sandy Hill as it runs from Daly (originally from Sussex Drive) to Wurtemburg Street near the Rideau River, it is busy Rideau Street a block to the north that defines the boundary of the district for most Ottawans. After some digging into assorted books and web pages, though, it seems we once more have proof that author Will Ferguson was right: Canadian history cannot possibly be boring. It's just a matter of knowing where and how to look for the key details. Therefore, consider this man: Louis-Théodore Besserer...born a child of Québec in 1785, veteran of the War of 1812, doomed to self-imposed exile in Bytown as a consequence of his stance on the Rebellions of 1837. The child of mixed German and French-Canadian parents, his early life was unremarkable by all accounts.  He became first a student at the Petit Séminaire de Québec and eventually became a public notary in 1810, developing a decent reputation within the field.

This story might have started with the publication of Sir Walter Scott's historical novels such as discussed here previously, back in the first half of the 19th Century. Or we could date it from 1910 and the founding of the Britannia Highlands syndicate, the group responsible for developing the neighbourhood that is home to these streets. At that time, Nepean Township still existed on the maps and in the statute books of Canada and Ontario alike, and Britannia was a farming village in Nepean Township. The village dated from ...

_____ It's starting to become a habit: research for one project hereabouts leads to surprising connections to other things that you didn't plan for. This is often a good thing, and it certainly was in this case. First a bit of personal nostalgia: when I was growing up in Regina, there was this commercial on television that one could count on as a confirmation of summer's arrival being either complete or at least immiment. The commercial advertised a play that I never got to see before leaving Regina for Ottawa: The Trial of Louis Riel. As advertised by the title, the play was a dramatic re-enactment of that same trial of that twice-rebellious, doomed and martyred Métis politician. Fast-forward to 2011 Ottawa. In the course of researching matters of Lowertown history, I stumbled across a heritage building with links to the North-West Rebellion, the ill-fated last of Louis Riel's two campaigns against the federal government in the spring of 1885 on the plains of what is now Saskatchewan.

Many regular readers will already be aware of the work now underway to build an outdoor ice rink as part of Marion Dewar Plaza in front of Ottawa City Hall. This has come as welcome news to many Ottawans for a number of reasons: once finished, the rink will be easily accessible and obviously central; a perfect compliment to the "world's biggest outdoor rink" just a block away under the Laurier bridge. But if won't be the first time the advantages of having a outdoor skating rink in the downtown core have occurred to City planners. This is something that most Ottawa hockey historians likely already know. But given the fact that it's not yet formally marked with any kind of plaque - at least not the last we checked - it might be easy for most of the rest of us to miss this detail of Ottawa's athletic history. Whilst checking out the fire insurance maps for Ottawa as published in 1902 and revised in 1912, one would notice an ice rink just across Laurier from the Drill Hall, where Confederation Park's southeastern quarter is today. (the grey-shaded area in lower left of image - Ed. )This was the third rink built under the auspices of the Dey Brothers' shipbuilding operation in Ottawa, and the second arena to house the team we know today as the original Ottawa Senators.

[caption id="attachment_6423" align="alignnone" width="524" caption="A new mystery for crime readers?"][/caption] _______ This past week, Chapters' Rideau Street store reopened their childrens' section on the second floor, newly rebranded as part of their "IndigoKids" program. The northwestern corner of the second floor had been undergoing those renovations for a month, so a certain degree of change was expected. But what I saw -- or rather, what I didn't see -- when I first visited the reopened section at the upper end of the escalators was a surprise, though. Where was the wonderful view of Sussex and George from the windows at the northwest corner of the building? In fact, where were the windows?

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="325" caption="Who needs a downtown library when you've got the Greely branch?"][/caption] Last month the Ottawa Citizen ran an opinion piece by Mark Sutcliffe about what he alleges is a lack of a “business case” to justify the construction of a new main branch for the Ottawa Public Library. Mr. Sutcliffe makes an argument of particular interest to me: “…it’s hard to imagine people coming in from Kanata and Orléans to use the downtown library when they have perfectly good libraries in their neighbourhoods.” I admit to living in Orléans. Further, I’ve lived there for a quarter-century now, and cannot remember a time when I didn’t visit the main branch on Laurier West at least once in any given month. The reasons are many and varied, but I still made those trips. In fact, several of my more recent contributions to Spacing Ottawa could not have been researched as quickly or as well without the help of  Brian Silcoff and his colleagues from the Main Branch's Ottawa Room; digging up those back-stories on several of the streets of the city was possible because of their help. Am I an exceptional case among the regular visitors to the OPL?  My impression from chatting with my fellow researchers is that a survey of those using the Main Branch's reference section would turn up a large number of “exceptional cases”, hailing from Orléans, Kanata, South Keys, even from Gatineau.

Call this a work in progress. Also, expect this category to be revisited. With those two caveats out of the way, we'll begin with this thought: In one sense, this post is similar to the Works of Fiction instalment. The difference is that these famous names belonged, or belong, in some cases, to real people. The names mostly come from one branch or another of the entertainment industry; they go back almost a century, so they usually ring a bell with a volume that varies with the age of the citizen who reads them on the signpost. In one or two cases we suspect the sound has grown very faint, but in several cases, more than one generation counts a street's namesake as part of their own cultural history. Take Shatner Gate out in the Hazeldean-Katimavik region of Kanata for instance. Built in the early 1980's, it was almost certainly named for actor William Shatner.  His career as an actor began with the CBC, and it took him from his native Montréal to Ottawa, before sending him west to California and from there, of course, to the bridge of the USS Enterprise.