Streetlights overdue for fixing

Editor, Glebe Report

The streetlights have not been working in front of 187 and 171 Clemow Avenue for the last five years! The city has been called, they’ve looked at it and have not dealt with it. In the meantime, bike lanes have been painted on our streets and all kinds of things are being done except what really matters!

It is a hazard in the evening to walk without lights. Will it take a lawsuit to act on this?

Caren von Merveldt

Why were tree stumps in Dow’s Great Swamp?

Editor, Glebe Report

I very much enjoyed seeing the historic photos of the tree stumps in Dow’s Lake in the December issue of the Glebe Report Readers might be interested to know why the tree stumps had been left in the Rideau Canal. Prior to the construction of the Canal, what we know today as Dow’s Lake was known as Dow’s Great Swamp and extended from the Rideau River in the south across parts of the current site of Carleton University through what is now Little Italy all the way to the Ottawa River in the north. The route chosen for the Canal required that it pass through Dow’s Great Swamp, but the surveyor John MacTaggart wrote in his memoir Three Years in Canada: An Account of the Actual State of the Country in 1826-7-8 that “cedar trees that grow as thickly in the swamp as they can possibly grow, and average fourteen inches thick, and seventy feet high” presented an obstacle to construction. He proposed, as a new and untried solution, that the trees be sawn off at the “proper level” to support the sides of an aqueduct made of wood in the route of Canal. While he recognized that the “idea of carrying a canal over the trees in Canada may raise the laugh against us,” he went on to note that “a cedar-tree, when cut down, will remain fresh fifty years; and surely a tree standing on, and fixed by its roots, is a stronger and steadier support for an aqueduct than any pile of the height requisite.” The proposed aqueduct presented a practical problem however, as it would have to be drained of water each winter so that ice would not damage the structure.

Colonel By had a better solution –the construction of an embankment at both the south and north ends of the swamp – and in doing so, converted Dow’s Great Swamp into Dow’s Lake, complete with the stumps of the cedar trees that had been cut to the “proper level.”

David A. Walden

Snow clearing woes (and a shout-out)

Editor, Glebe Report

As all of us are looking forward to cleared streets; I am just questioning the timing of this operation!

All side streets are marked “No Parking “ from 7 p.m. to 7 a.m.! The person making those plans has obviously never been in business to know how hard it is for us.

Why on a Saturday night? What is wrong with Monday nights when most