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Ontario History

Ottawa’s Streetcars: An Illustrated History of Electric Railway Transit in Canada’s Capital City. By Bill McKeown Gregory Stott

Volume 99, numéro 2, fall 2007

URI : https://id.erudit.org/iderudit/1065745ar DOI : https://doi.org/10.7202/1065745ar

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Éditeur(s) The Ontario Historical Society

ISSN 0030-2953 (imprimé) 2371-4654 (numérique)

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Citer ce compte rendu Stott, G. (2007). Compte rendu de [’s Streetcars: An Illustrated History of Electric Railway Transit in Canada’s Capital City. By Bill McKeown]. Ontario History, 99(2), 257–259. https://doi.org/10.7202/1065745ar

Copyright © The Ontario Historical Society, 2007 Ce document est protégé par la loi sur le droit d’auteur. L’utilisation des services d’Érudit (y compris la reproduction) est assujettie à sa politique d’utilisation que vous pouvez consulter en ligne. https://apropos.erudit.org/fr/usagers/politique-dutilisation/

Cet article est diffusé et préservé par Érudit. Érudit est un consortium interuniversitaire sans but lucratif composé de l’Université de Montréal, l’Université Laval et l’Université du Québec à Montréal. Il a pour mission la promotion et la valorisation de la recherche. https://www.erudit.org/fr/ book reviews 257 to contextualize the lumbering story. da today. The is a part of this In a final, environmentally-oriented larger continent-wide story of resource use chapter titled “Was It Worth Cutting and overuse. Lee’s greater acknowledgment Down All Those Trees?” Lee answers ‘yes.’ here would have been helpful. Agreement is not unqualified, and he does All this said, Lumber Kings and Shanty- acknowledge the huge amounts of pollu- men is a solidly researched work which adds tion and wasted wood caused by the cut- usefully to our understanding of our past. ting. But for Lee the industry did more Lee’s presentation is clear and the book is good than bad. His question is not envi- well illustrated and thoroughly indexed, ronmental but, rather, a more local cultural and on the whole covers its subject well. and economic one. From his perspective The book adds a needed northern study to lumbering created a beneficial foundation the logging history of North America. for later agricultural and industrial de- velopment and has helped shape Ottawa Hans M. Carlson valley culture. Yet it is hard to ignore that State University of New York, Plattsburg the environmental story of forest clearing on this continent – from Maine and New Bibliography: Brunswick to Michigan and Wisconsin, Ray, Arthur J. “Introduction” in reprint- then to the Pacific northwest, and finally ed edition of Harold A Innis, The Fur to the American south – was driven by in- Trade in Canada: an Introduction to satiable demand for softwood, particularly Canadian Economic History. Toronto: white pine. It continues in northern Cana- University of Toronto Press, 1999. Ottawa’s Streetcars An Illustrated History of Electric Railway Transit in Canada’s Capital City. By Bill McKeown. Montreal: Railfare DC Books, 2006. 256 pp. $59.95 hardcover. ISBN 1-897190-07-7.

s the editor’s fore- Britannia Beach amusement word suggests Ottawa’s park. This book is full of high- Streetcars is a labour of quality photographs that play Alove, and the culmination of to one’s nostalgia, and the fact an Ottawa native’s lifelong fas- that the research and writ- cination with the city and its ing occurred over a number rail transit systems. Many read- of decades and largely while ers, too, may recollect those McKeown lived thousands days, as late as 1959, of big red of kilometres away in Osaka, streetcars passing the National Japan, provides an enhanced War Memorial and the leafy appreciation for his dedica- bowers of Rockcliffe, or rock- tion. McKeown, who did not ing through farmlands to the live to see publication of the 258 ONTARIO HISTORY

book, provides a thorough coverage of Ot- 1900), thanks to the protests of influential tawa’s street-railway transit system from its residents of Sussex Street. Negotiations and earliest origins in the late 1860s as a series plebiscites over the issue of public owner- of horse-drawn omnibuses and sleighs. He ship of the Ottawa Electric Railway, and carries the story into the era of electric cars, the sometimes tense and divisive labour re- starting in the 1890s, and follows it through lations, put the experience of Ottawa into more or less chronologically to the phasing a larger North American context. Ottawa out of the electric railway after World War set a standard for snow removal, stabling II under the Ottawa Transportation Com- a fleet of plows and sweepers, plus Model mission. While not central to the work, a ‘T’ trucks, and even sleighs that continued discussion of the re-emergence of rail tran- in use until 1945. It ran cars carrying the sit in Ottawa at the start of the twenty-first Royal Mail, and furnished unique equip- century figures in one of the appendices. ment when royalty visited the capital. But McKeown provides important insights the continuous battles over fares, shared into the way that electric railways were responsibilities for maintenance, and other shaped by, and in turned helped shape, the difficulties ultimately culminated in the city and its patterns of growth and change. city’s assumption of ownership follow- What looks today like solid ground be- ing World War II. Ottawa has had unique tween the National War Memorial and the public transport challenges, and the electric Chateau Laurier hotel has lurking within its system really looked archaic when the lines history and archaeology the Sappers Bridge closed down in 1959. (connected to ), the Dufferin Ottawa Streetcars is filled with sto- Bridge (connected to Wellington Street), a ries, great and small, related to the transit towpath along the , and the system. McKeown explores the persistent tracks of the Hull Electric and Canadian legends about the absence of the number Pacific railways. A dozen superbly repro- 7 on the company’s vehicles, and provides duced photographs from the National Ar- a dozen appendices: lists of rolling stock, chives collection and the lesser-known City written recollections, photocopies of cor- of Ottawa Archives bring this sequence of porate agreements, and more. Trackage and planning and development vividly to life. route maps are scattered through the text. Urban landscape enthusiasts will find the He describes Britannia Beach park, an ur- pictures in this book a particular treat. ban recreational site served by streetcars for Chapter Four examines the relation- nearly sixty years. Cars ran to the Rockcliffe ships, at times poisoned, between street rifle ranges for a shorter period, catering to railway owners and officials, City Hall, and another specialized audience. the public at large. The Pas- Ottawa Streetcars should prove invalu- senger Railway, Ottawa Electric Railway, able for anyone examining the develop- Hull Electric Railway, and even the Mor- ment of transit systems in other Canadian risburg and Ottawa interurban proposal cities. Based upon thorough primary and of 1908 all created political and planning secondary research, the work exhaustively tensions. Everyone wanted a piece of the details the minutiae of developments in the action in this complex interprovincial ur- technological, organizational, and political ban area with its multiple layers of bureauc- history of the original Ottawa City Passen- racy. Railway freight on Ottawa streets ger Railway and its successors. While such was one irritant and short-lived (around detail may be slightly overwhelming to the book reviews 259 casual reader, for the avid student of transit bits of litter strewn about) as the open-sided systems or those interested in the history of “Chaudiere Falls” car clatters past, passen- Canada’s capital, such detail will enhance gers dangling dangerously. (p. 79) Readers the enjoyment of the work. In addition to are in for a visual feast. On the whole Ot- colourful anecdotes and studies of various tawa Stretcars provides interesting insights personalities involved in the running of the into the broader social and political history streetcar system, the hundreds of archival of Ottawa for the better part of a century photographs, maps, and other material (in and highlights the importance of transit black and white and colour) closely comple- systems to the Canadian urban experience. ment the text and make for a visually stun- ning book. Sussex Street at Rideau Hall gate Gregory Stott about 1900 is one of the best: horse-drawn University of British Columbia, Okanagan carriage waiting in the dusty street (with Campus

Port Hope: a History By Ian Montagnes. Port Hope, Ontario: Ga- naraska Press, 2007. vii + 228 pp. $29.50 soft- cover. ISBN 0-9781968-0-5. he launch of this book signals the birth of the Ganaraska Press, the brain-child of Ian Montagnes and This wife Elizabeth Wilson. Montagnes is the former editor-in-chief of the Uni- versity of Toronto Press and, not surpris- ingly, he has been able to draw on this ex- perience and his considerable literary and production connections in the execution of this inaugural book. The foreword by fellow Port Hope resident Farley Mowat and the superb photography of John de Visser, along with the book design of Wil- later the Ganaraska, and the harbour which lem Hart, make this a singularly attractive formed the river’s outlet into Lake Ontario. and readable book and set it above many, if Port Hope is one of a string of towns on the not most, of the ‘community histories’ that ‘Old Ontario Strand’ each of which served form this burgeoning genre. a rural hinterland encompassing not only Comprising twenty-five tightly-focused the first tier of counties along Lake Ontario chapters, Port Hope: a History surveys a wide but also the back country districts of Peter- range of topics that track the unfolding of borough and beyond. As ports these towns, this town from first settlement in 1792 to which included (among others) Cobourg, its modern manifestation in the late twen- Grafton, Colborne, Brighton, Trenton, and tieth century. At the heart of this narrative Belleville to the east, as well as Port Britain, is the river, initially called Smith Creek and Newcastle, Bowmanville, Oshawa, and