Pellerin: 2025, the year to beautify Ottawa as Canada's capital?

Let's start by making Wellington Street the capital thoroughfare Ottawa deserves.

Published Dec 27, 2024  •  Last updated 0 minutes ago  •  3 minute read

This historical image on X (formerly twitter) shows an open pedestrian plaza down the street from Parliament Hill. Photo by National Capital Commission

The new year is almost here and while there are many things about 2024 I don’t particularly want to think about, there was a tonne of good stuff. As you digest your turkey and walk around in a full-bellied daze unsure what day of the week it is — not that it matters — I offer a few pleasant things I remember about the year that was.

From my perch, the most successful column I wrote in 2024 was one from February about the Holt-Bennett Plan of 1915, which aimed to beautify the national capital region. It was a plan designed to make Ottawa the Washington of the North (not that we must be the Something of Something Else to be awesome. One day we’ll feel grown up enough to just be us and that won’t come a moment too soon).

Article content

The Holt-Bennet Plan was human-friendly and beautiful and as a result thoroughly ignored for well over a century, except for you, today’s residents of Ottawa who want to live in a capital city you can be proud of.

This should, clearly, start with the patch of asphalt that’s right in front of Parliament Hill. Wellington Street has been a mess since long before we stopped minting pennies to throw into the Centennial Flame.

It was one of the first two streets to be laid out in what was then Bytown, in 1826. (The other was Rideau Street, which is really the same street going east from the Rideau Canal.) Wellington goes west for a while, all the way to Island Park Drive, where it continues under the name Richmond Road. That’s around the corner from where I live, which is a solid five-kilometre bike ride from the Peace Tower.

The portion of Wellington that is of interest to those of us who’d like to live in a pretty capital is between the Château Laurier and the Portage Bridge. The part that got occupied during the trucker convoy, then was closed to vehicular traffic with big concrete blocks and no apparent desire to seize that opportunity to make it a place for people. Mayor Mark Sutcliffe is reportedly hard at work negotiating something with the federal government that’s supposed to make us happy, and I told him I’d lead the parade should he be successful. I won’t be holding my breath.

Article content

Instead, I’ll use my cardio-vascular capacity to continue advocating as best I can. I’m pleased to report that there’s also a small group of dedicated folks endeavouring to raise support for the kind of public place that would make us all proud, gathered around Sen. Andrew Cardozo, whose views on Wellington are well-known to Citizen readers. I’m grateful for their invaluable stubbornness.

Another column that generated a lot of enthusiasm combined two of my favourite things — books and people-centred urbanism. Ottawa native Derrick Simpson’s Urbanism Book Club started as a small group of keeners and has blossomed into a healthy and active community of well-informed champions of the kinds of reforms that would make this town work better for everyone, not just car drivers. Not that it works so great for car drivers either. The success of this book club is making me all kinds of happy.

I was also pleased to shine a little light on a fantastic Algonquin College program that mixes heritage construction with elements from the humanities, because there is never too much philosophy in anything. I’m delighted to live in a place that values a well-rounded education, including in the trades.

But most of all, I am grateful for another year of columnizing and for your comments and criticisms (yes, both). A writer is nothing without their readers. Thanks, y’all, for keeping me going.

Wishing you the happiest of holidays, Ottawa.

Brigitte Pellerin (they/them) is an Ottawa writer.

Recommended from Editorial

1. 

   Pellerin: Compliments of the season, or how to be nice to strangers

2. 

   Pellerin: These wellness clinics could ease Ottawa doctor shortage

Article content