On a visit to Ottawa last week I was shown a most
interesting document outlining in some detail the
The proposal has been drawn up by the Windmill Development
Group, Canadian developers, who want to use the 37 acres of
the property they have bought from
Domtar, the paper-manufacturer. The architects of the proposed Windmill
development are Perkins and Will, of San Francisco, and the Ottawa architect
Barry Padolsky, an expert in the culture and heritage of the city of Ottawa,
has been hired as heritage consultant.
These islands ---
Chaudiere and Amelia islands on the Ontario side, and Philomen island
on the Quebec side, outlined by the dotted red line in the map shown here, which delineates the limits of the Windmill proposal --- have been used for more than 200 years, first, by the
logging industry on which Ottawa was founded at the beginning of the nineteenth
century, and later by pulp and paper interests, as well as hydro-electric
companies which still operate four generating stations right there in the
middle of the Ottawa river, downstream from the Chaudiere Falls dam. Readers will note that the large Victoria island, to which access is gained from one of the bridges, is excluded from the Windmill scheme.
What surprised me about the document I saw was the scale
of the industrial work that has historically been carried out there. It was
immense, and at one time rated among the
biggest industrial projects in North America. The timber barons who moved in, Philomen Wright and his son Ruggles, J.R.
Booth, E.B Eddy and others, became immensely wealthy, and in their time were almost
all-powerful. Booth was said at one time to trade more lumber than any other
man in the world.
The first timber was taken in the form of what were called
squared logs --- simply trees cut down and squared off before being shipped to
England --- first, by being run down the Ottawa river to Montreal for
trans-shipment ---- mostly for use by the Royal Navy in construction of its
ships.
Later came sawed lumber, and photos of those years show
how huge were the piles that were established before being shipped off, usually
by barge. When this timber began to run out, the industrialists turned to
creating a pulp and paper industry that made paper for most of the great
newspapers of North America, and some in Europe. Later E.B. Eddy established a
match-making factory. This lumbering has continued to the present day
throughout the Ottawa river basin, feeding for the most part regional pulp mills,
and it is still a matter of contention between the governing authorities and
the Algonquin inhabitants of these forests who, historically, were simply
pushed aside to make way for the loggers, and were thus reduced to a deplorable
state of poverty. At no time during this long history have they ever ceased to struggle to have their ownership of these valuable lands recognized, a struggle that is continuing today.
I remember a decade ago, when filming the depredations
being made of the traditional hunting territories of the Algonquins in La
Verendrye park, coming across the biggest pile of logs I could ever imagine, hundreds
of thousands of logs, lined up beside the Gatineau river, ready for dispatch
into the waters, to be floated down to Ottawa. (This was discontinued soon
after, since when the Gatineau river, almost fatally polluted by the trade, has
been cleaned up, and is today available for recreation.
This notable industrial history, certainly worth preserving as an
element of heritage not only for the city but for the nation as a whole, does
present proposals for “cleaning up” the site with considerable difficulty,
because the remaining industrial structures are admitted to be of little
intrinsic architectural interest, however much it might be desirable to
preserve them for the education of present-day generations.
The Windmill proposal is for condos, walkways and so on,
to establish a viable living community on the Chaudiere, Albert and Amelia
islands in the middle of the river. But a cultural and heritage assessment of
the plans, and of the possibilities, is under preparation.
Windmill requires a re-zoning by the cities of Ottawa and Gatineau
before it can turn a spade in the ground. Since Hydro Ottawa already plans a
fifth 29-megawatt generating station on the islands, and Hydro-Quebec owns land on the other side
of the river, one thing is clear: to work through the maze of different
ownerships and jurisdictions will be a process requiring immense finesse,
tolerance from both sides of the river, skills of diplomacy and vision for both
the past and the future.
At the moment is seems that the municipal governments are
on board for this effort, but one thing that I found curious about the overall
photos of the area was that Victoria island, at present the most accessible to
the public, on which stand the remains of the most handsome of the extant
buildings, does not even appear in the photos.
I vividly remember being present at a wonderful concert
given by Buffy Ste Marie many years ago, outside the tall stone remains of an
industrial building on Victoria Island, that is in these days used in the summer
for a variety of operations by local native groups. Similarly, the first time I
ever heard of Robert Lepage, the innovative
stage director, was when he staged one of his plays in a tall brick
building on Victoria island that still stands, in which the audience was able to
surround the stage in balconies rising to the roof, looking down on actors who
played their parts in a pool of water covering the stage. These two events
surely suggest the sort of future use that could be made of these island lands
in the middle of one of Canada’s iconic great rivers. Victoria island is the
proposed site of the Gathering of the Nations place, which has been suggested
by the late Grand Chief William Commanda as a centre for aboriginal cultural
and spiritual activity. The Ottawa river was the centre of Algonquin life long
before Europeans arrived here, and they have long hankered after having at least
Victoria island transformed into such a place as Chief Commanda recommended.
This has to happen if Canada is to live up to its self-image as an
imaginative and compassionate nation. But the reason why nothing is happening on Victoria island is
that it is owned by the government of Canada, which is showing a notable lack
of interest in the possibilities of redeveloping, improving and once again
using the centre of this great river.
“There’s not even a whisper of interest from any agency of
the federal government,” said one interested architect, who merely shrugged
disconsolately when asked for an explanation.
One doesn’t need to be a rocket scientist to discover the
reason. The inertia can be traced back to Cabinet level, in other words, to
Prime Minister Stephen Harper himself, so this can be just one more area added
to the long list of important projects for the health and spiritual well-being
of Canadians that have been stalled by the lack of imagination, the failure of
vision, and the strange control-freak impulses of our Prime Minister.
It seems unlikely anything can be done to awaken this
government to show even a spark of interest in this important proposal, which
could help to transform our somewhat sleepy capital city into a more vibrant
presence. The only hope, it seems, is that the government is changed at the next
election.
As I have written on this web site before --- Harper
Out! ---- should be the slogan
for anyone who hopes for a more imaginative and vibrant Canada.
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