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Change is the only constant – more development in the Glebe Annex
By Sue Stefko
There is more change afoot in the Glebe Annex, with yet another proposed development.
While most of the development has been occurring at the south end of the neighbourhood, this one is planned for the north, close to the Queensway. It is situated at the north end of Bell Street South, where Orangeville turns into Bell. Four homes, 273 to 281 Bell, which date back to the 1890s, will be demolished to make way for two new (but connected) apartment buildings, one on Bell and the other backing onto the laneway at Arthur Lane South. Two existing homes, 269 and 271 Bell, which abut the highway, will be left in place. However, they are owned by the same developer and are described in the proposal as future development prospects.
On the Bell Street side, the developer plans to build a six-storey building containing 12 studio and 29 one-bedroom units. Ground floor units will have private patios. On Arthur Lane South, the building is to be four storeys – one storey of above-ground parking below three storeys of living space. For that portion, four one-bedroom units and four two-storey, two-bedroom units are proposed. That makes a total of 49 units in the two buildings, which will have a landscaped courtyard with bike storage between them. They will be connected by a covered walkway at the second storey.
The developer is proposing several environmental features. These include enhanced insulation, radiant heating and cooling powered via a heat pump (there will be no natural gas on site), high-thermal-performance windows, low-flow water fixtures and high efficiency appliances. The developer also commits to exploring the use of greywater recycling and semi-permeable paving.
When it comes to height, the proposed complex complies with zoning requirements on the Arthur Lane side, but it’s two storeys too tall on the Bell side. It also diverges from current zoning by providing only seven parking spaces, far fewer than the 19 residential spaces and four visitor spaces required. It does, however, provide 56 bicycle parking spaces when only 25 are required. Although more bike spaces are appreciated, the Glebe Annex isn’t served particularly well by transit, especially in the winter when most people do not bike, and it’s a fairly long walk to buy basic goods like groceries. Another divergence from zoning is the shortage of multi-bedroom units – a building this size is supposed to have 12 units with two or more bedrooms; this one
Existing houses at 273-281 Bell Street South PHOTO: SUE STEFKO
has only four.
All in all, there is much to like about the proposal. Some of the homes to be torn down have been vacant for some time; using this land more productively to bring life back to the area is a welcome change. More rental units are needed during a housing crisis, and the proposed environmental features are laudable.
At the same time, it is difficult to lose four more single-family homes to mostly studio and one-bedroom units, especially in a neighbourhood with fewer families moving in. The price of land has rendered singlefamily homes and larger, family-oriented units unaffordable for most. This particular parcel of land, measuring 145 by 117 feet, was put on the market for $5.8 million in the spring of 2021. With prices like that, it’s increasingly challenging for a developer to stay within zoning and provide family-oriented dwellings. And so it is becoming more common in this neighbourhood and many others to see single-family
Rendering of the proposed development of two apartment buildings on Bell Street South
SOURCE: FOTENN PLANNING AND DESIGN
homes give way to multi-storey, multiunit developments. At least it can be said that the Glebe Annex is contributing to Ottawa’s “missing middle” and much-needed housing development.
Please note that comments on the proposal are open until June 17 – please see the devapps site at: https:// devapps.ottawa.ca/en/applications/ D02-02-22-0033/details)
Sue Stefko is president of the Glebe Annex Community Association.
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Storm destruction
In the derecho of May 21, 2022, trees came down and power lines were disrupted all around the neighbourhood� A derecho (Spanish for “straight”) is a widespread, long-lived, straight-line wind storm that is associated with a fast-moving group of severe thunderstorms� This high-impact derecho had winds up to 190 km/hour and was accompanied by at least one tornado� Some hydro customers in the city lost power for more than a week�
PHOTOS: ANANT NAGPUR, LIZ MCKEEN, LORRIE LOEWEN
Runners in the Ottawa Race Weekend make their way along Queen Elizabeth Drive Sunday morning May 29. PHOTO: LIZ MCKEEN
Glebe Report Association
Annual General Meeting, May 17, 2022
Remarks by Co-Chairs Andy Joyce and Jennifer Humphries (delivered by A. Joyce)
GRA board member Bhagwant Sandhu opened the meeting: I request that everyone join me in acknowledging that the AGM is being held on the unceded lands and territories of the Anishinaabe people, comprised of the Ojibwe, Chippewa, Odawa, Potawatomi, Algonquin, Saulteaux, Nipissing and Mississauga First Nations. The Anishinaabe have always lived here as the defenders and the customary guardians of the Ottawa River watershed and its tributaries. We thank them for their generosity and offer to join them in their efforts for self-determination, as well as the healing and the decolonization process that we share together.
Andy Joyce, co-chair of the Glebe Report Association Board of Directors along with co-chair Jennifer Humphries, delivered these remarks:
We had hoped to hold this meeting in person, but with the Omicron surge, your directors reluctantly decided to hold a virtual meeting. We sincerely hope that all of our future meetings will be held in person.
First of all, we’d like to tell you about some comings and goings. We are delighted to introduce our new director and treasurer, Lynn Johnston, and our second new director, Bhagwant Sandhu, both of whom joined us in January.
We would like to acknowledge the valuable work of Line Lønnum as treasurer over the past three years. Line is now on maternity leave, but continuing as a director. I think it’s safe to say that her little one is our first Glebe Report Board baby in a while!
On the distribution front, I would like to express our appreciation to Louise Green who has served as our Distribution Manager for the past year. Louise is now leaving us but has done a great job, including working with our Commercial Distributors to ensure that not only all residences but a huge number of businesses receive copies of the Glebe Report.
In 2021, the Glebe Report board and production team continued to cope with the pandemic, while forging ahead in some exciting new areas.
We have recently struck a Diversity Committee that will consider the Glebe Report’s approach to diversity and make recommendations to the board on how to deepen our commitment to diversity going forward.
We have also established a Website Redesign Committee that is developing a plan to refresh and renew our web presence. Following up on the recommendations of a web design consultant, a key part of our redesign
www.glebereport.ca
Established in 1973, the Glebe Report, published by the Glebe Report Association is a monthly not-forprofit community newspaper with a circulation of 7,500 copies� It is delivered free to Glebe homes and businesses� Advertising from merchants in the Glebe and elsewhere pays all its costs, and the paper receives no government grants or direct subsidies� The Glebe Report, made available at select locations such as the Glebe Community Centre and the Old Ottawa South Community Centre and Brewer Pool, is printed by Winchester Print�
EDITOR............................ Liz McKeen editor@glebereport.ca COPY EDITOR.................... Roger Smith LAYOUT DESIGNER............. Jock Smith layout@glebereport.ca GRAPEVINE EDITOR............ Micheline Boyle grapevine@glebereport.ca WEB EDITOR..................... Peter Polgar website@glebereport.ca SOCIAL MEDIA................... Sophie Shields ADVERTISING MANAGER...... Judy Field advertising@glebereport.ca 613-858-4804 BUSINESS MANAGER........... Debbie Pengelly accounting@glebereport.ca
DISTRIBUTION MANAGER..... COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTORS
Louise Green circulation@glebereport.ca Teddy Cormier, Eleanor Crowder PROOFREADERS................ Martha Bowers, Jeanette Rive AREA CAPTAINS................. Martha Bowers, Bob Brocklebank, Judy Field, Ginny Grimshaw, Jono Hamer-Wilson, Brenda Perras, Hilda van Walraven, Della Wilkinson will be making our site responsive on all platforms: that is, PCs, Macs, tablets and mobile phones. Another critical element is to enhance our analytics capability to ensure our readers are connecting to us so that our advertisers see value in advertising online with us as well as in print. Our goal is to launch our new website in 2023 in time for our 50th anniversary year.
Yes, the Glebe Report will reach its 50th birthday in June 2023. We are forming a 50th Anniversary Committee to identify appropriate ways to celebrate this wonderful milestone.
Once again in 2021, the Glebe Report achieved excellence in content and format. Our editor Liz McKeen made sure to cover the issues important to our Glebe community, in particular focusing on the people of the Glebe, including our own Glebe Report scholarship winners at Carleton University and Glebe Collegiate.
We will leave the financial report to Lynn, our treasurer. However we would like to note that we concluded our fiscal year ending November 2021 with a surplus of $1,515. This is excellent news, given the stresses and challenges of the pandemic on all of us, especially for local businesses that advertise in the Glebe Report.
Finally the board continues to emphasize the Glebe Report’s exposure on social media. We now have 2,000 Twitter followers and 1,000 on Instagram. As well, we have over 600 e-newsletter subscribers. And, while we will be enhancing our website through the redesign project, our current site receives a substantial number of visitors, regularly achieving 7,000 pageviews each month.
Let me conclude with a few much-deserved thanks.
Many thanks to our fantastic production team members who contribute so much time and effort to produce our high quality newspaper. In this group, we acknowledge with pleasure and gratitude 25 years of dedicated service by Judy Field as our Advertising Manager.
Thanks to our numerous volunteer writers and proofreaders, and area captains and carriers for their tremendous efforts on behalf of the paper.
And thanks to our advertisers and loyal readers. Without you, there would be no Glebe Report. And I think you will agree, that would be a tremendous gap in the life of our community.
We offer one last note of thanks to
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For Glebe Report advertising deadlines and rates, call the advertising manager� Advertising rates are for electronic material supplied in pdf format with fonts embedded in the file�
Views expressed in the articles and letters submitted to the Glebe Report are those of our contributors� We reserve the right to edit all submissions� Articles selected for publication will be published in both a printed version and an online version on the Glebe Report’s website: www� glebereport�ca� Please note: Except for July, the paper is published monthly� An electronic version of the print publication is subsequently uploaded online with text, photos, drawings and advertisements as a PDF to www�glebereport� ca� Selected articles will be highlighted on the website�
The Glebe Report acknowledges that its offices and the Glebe neighbourhood it serves are on the unceded lands and territories of the Anishinaabe people, comprised of the Ojibwe, Chippewa, Odawa, Potawatomi, Algonquin, Saulteaux, Nipissing and Mississauga First Nations� our fellow directors for their valued time and support over the past year and to all of you here this evening and to everyone in the Glebe neighbourhood who contributes so much to our superb community newspaper. Please keep on doing it!
Glebe Report Association Board of Directors: Shabana Ansari Vaughn Guy Jennifer Humphries, co-chair Lynn Johnston, treasurer Andy Joyce, co-chair Patricia Lightfoot Line Lonnum John MacNab Beatrice Keleher Raffoul Bhagwant Sandhu Steve Zan
Glebe Report Production Team: Teddy Cormier, Commercial Deliveries Eleanor Crowder, Commercial Deliveries Judy Field, Advertising Manager Louise Green, Distribution Manager Liz McKeen, Editor Debbie Pengelly, Business Manager Peter Polgar, Web Editor Sophie Shields, Social Media Jock Smith, Layout Designer Roger Smith, Copy Editor
Glebe
Comings & Goings �
SEN Asian Cuisine at Lansdowne has closed its doors. SEN was the only “indie” restaurant at Lansdowne.
Beez Kneez pop-up ice cream truck has set up in Kunstadt Sports’ parking lot, brought to you by Banditos Restaurant.
Second Avenue Sweets will be closing it’s doors for good, as of June 30, 2022.
Contributors this month
Iva Apostolova Matthew Behrens Martha Bowers Marie Briscoe Blake Butler Randy Cameron Janice Cameron-Caluori Anthony Carricato John Dance Pat Goyeche Don Greenfield Joel Harden Jennifer Humphries Andy Joyce Geoff Kellow Kigor Jean-Denis Labelle Chris Leggett Angus Luff Randal Marlin Claire Marshall Tom Martin Ian McKercher Shawn Menard Marion Moritz Yasir Naqvi Michael Kofi Ngongi Susan Palmai Douglas Parker Caroline Phillips Mustafa Rashid Vicki Robinson Marisa Romano Larysa Rozumna Kevin Shoom Laura Smith Sue Stefko JC Sulzenko Elspeth Tory Susan Townley Mary Tsai Jim Watson Zeus
Memoirs from Marty Hamer
Editor, Glebe Report
Please let your readers know that a new book of memoir, written by wellloved and dearly missed Glebe resident Marty Hamer, was accepted into the catalogue of the Ottawa Public Library and now resides at her beloved Sunnyside Branch. Margaret & Mary, Mostly Memoir was a legacy project for her family, friends and neighbours and was published in late 2021. The collection contains 55 pieces of “finished” writing that she left behind when cancer claimed her in early 2020.
The stories tell of her early life in Kingston and the new suburbs of Toronto and of her adolescence on the West Island of Montreal. In “Backup to 1972” she takes her readers into the swirling and colourful life of a “hippie house” on the Glebe’s Fourth Avenue. Her mother’s advancing dementia in the 1990s moved Marty to write many pieces that helped her process dear Mary’s illness. These stories make up the bulk of the book’s fourth section, True Life Stories. If you knew her voice, you will find it again in these lovely memoirs.
Randy Cameron life-partner, curator, publisher
Marty Hamer’s family will host a celebration of her life at the First Unitarian Congregation of Ottawa, 30 Cleary Avenue on August 6 at 3 p.m.
Farewell to the tulip festival?
Editor, Glebe Report
It was wonderful to have the Tulip Festival back this year! Despite the major weather events, the festival was an enormous success, with tens of thousands of people enjoying the tulip beds and events at Commissioner’s Park. Not to mention the fireworks!
Will we still have the festival in a couple of years? It is difficult to imagine hours-long traffic jams being tolerated next to the new Civic Hospital campus. The hospital is also unlikely to appreciate having its parking garage filled with the cars of tulip watchers. And can you imagine allowing a fireworks display next to a hospital?!
Enjoy the Tulip Festival while it lasts.
Prior to the “Lansdowne Live” redevelopment, Sylvia Holden Park was a green oasis on the corner of Bank and Holmwood.
Lansdowne befuddlement
Editor, Glebe Report
How trustworthy are OSEG and city officials when it comes to presenting an accurate portrayal of what has been dubbed Lansdowne 2.0 to City Council? To judge from the pictures and language used to sway the public into accepting the most recent redevelopment, the answer has to be very little or not at all.
An advertisement in the Ottawa Citizen for November 10, 2009 depicts a rendering of an aerial view looking north that sketches a long line of flourishing, well-developed trees. What actually resulted was the axing of trees to make room for housing and underground parking.
Mayor Jim Watson in his recent defense of Lansdowne 2.0 claimed that Lansdowne had been a “ghost town” with tumbleweed going through it. “There was nothing taking place there unless you had a ticket.” There is no acknowledgement that Sylvia Holden Park, a green oasis that existed then at the corner of Bank and Holmwood, was much loved by visitors to Lansdowne. Local residents had planted some 85 trees with the help of the city to provide an interesting sweep of green along Holmwood from Bank to O’Connor.
Similarly, there was a Farmer’s Market next to the Aberdeen Pavilion. And demonstrations held in Lansdowne against the Lansdowne development show that it was a vibrant gathering place.
City councillors have many reasons to vote against Lansdowne 2.0. One of them is the funny-money accounting and false assurances that the city’s investment in Lansdowne 1.0 (“Lansdowne Live”) would be recouped through new revenue money according to a “waterfall” arrangement. The waterfall, as we now know, turned out to be a dried-out wadi for the city.
Another problem is the notion of air rights. This is in place of normal property rights, which include title to the land. The situation could be described as the city “not giving up land.” But it’s also a way for a developer to saddle the city with headaches connected to buildings not designed to last beyond a certain time, 35 years or whatever the correct figure is. Apparently the developer or successors have the option to hand over a derelict building to the city to deal with. This doesn’t seem a responsible arrangement for future taxpayers.
Surely city councillors should not be tying the hands of the next council.
Lansdowne deserves much more public consultation and transparency before a penny of taxpayers’ money is spent furthering the aims of a group that has befuddled people so much in the past.
Stunt driving on First Avenue
Editor, Glebe Report
Our kids have a right to safe streets they can play on! Please slow the cars!!
The Great Glebe Garage Sale onceagain live was a wonderful day! To experience our streets full of happy, smiling people slowly meandering from street to street is a special joy. Remove the cars, slow them down, what an incredible difference it makes to our neighbourhood.
Unfortunately later that day a frightening incident occurred on our street. Once the Great Glebe Garage Sale closed down, neighbours’ kids and their friends took to the street to play road hockey. Within minutes, to our utter shock, a speeding car heading down the street down shifted gears with such force, right where the kids were playing, so loudly that we all thought it was an explosion. We and several other parents ran to the street, concerned that kids had been hurt. The driver sped off, far exceeding the posted 30k/h speed limit and likely in the “stunt driving” zone.
First Avenue between Percy and Bronson experiences high-speed cars and trucks racing down our kids’ street, often the wrong way, on a daily and nightly basis. This is a one-way street in a school zone, a bus route, with no bike lane and no street parking to slow down traffic, and shockingly, absolutely no traffic calming interventions.
I have brought this to the attention of our councillor Shawn Menard on at least eight occasions in person and with letters and nothing has been done to make this street safe for our kids!
As we see traffic calming measures being installed all over the Glebe, we wonder why once again First Avenue has been abandoned in its attempts to control speeding vehicles. And again, with great frustration and serious concern for the safety of our kids, we offer some suggestions to ensure children are safe to play on their streets: • Install a speed-monitoring device to verify what we are experiencing (this simple request has been made at least 10 times!); • Install a new speed capture/fine camera (it will be a big money capture); • Install a bike lane; • Install a stop sign at the corner of
Chrysler and First Avenue; • Install traffic slowing street markers; • Remove teacher parking in lieu of parking for locals.
If you share our concern for the safety of kids not only on First Avenue but on all streets, please tell our City Councillor Shawn Menard at CapitalWard@ ottawa.ca.
And make our streets safe for kids, not fast moving vehicles!
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Bronson Carling to Fifth Bronson Fifth to the bridge QED Greek Embassy to Bronson Old Sunset Blvd
Glebe Collegiate Institute, this year celebrating one hundred years, has a rich history and presence in the community.
PHOTO: LIZ MCKEEN
Glebe Collegiate Institute – a historic landmark
By Blake Butler
This September marks the 100th anniversary of Glebe Collegiate Institute (GCI). The school has been home to more than 40,000 students and 3,000 teachers since it first opened in September 1922. It is a fixture of the Glebe community.
As current GCI student Zahra Duxbury explained in the April edition of the Glebe Report, the school was initially built as an expansion of the Ottawa Collegiate Institute (OCI), now known as Lisgar. A growing local population and provincial policies such as the 1919 Adolescence School Attendance Act created crowded conditions at OCI. Construction began in October 1921, and the new collegiate institute opened its doors less than a year later. With the building not yet fully completed, the “official” opening was delayed until May 1923. That ceremony was held in the new assembly hall and included music by the OCI orchestra and speeches from prominent local figures such as R.H. Grant, Ontario’s Minister of Education, and G.H. Bowie, OCI board chairman.
The school may have been constructed as an expansion to OCI, but students and teachers quickly found ways to make their new home distinctly their own. In 1923, a committee of students and teachers chose blue and yellow (inspired by the University of Michigan) for the school’s colours. The formation of a student council and the Lux Glebana, the student yearbook, followed two years later. Local athletic achievements and 1926 Dominion championships in basketball and rowing – the rowing team also won an international championship that year – elevated the young school’s athletic reputation.
A rivalry with Lisgar was also established during these early years. The infamous “Great Bun Fight” of 1925 was one prominent episode in this history. That year, Lisgar students were invited to the Glebe school’s first Military Ball. As former GCI student Elizabeth Serson wrote in her 1947 commemorative history, Glebe: The First Twenty-Five Years, “no one knows who threw the first bun…But in two seconds the air was filled with whizzing missiles. Benches and tables were mounted for better aiming, and the cafeteria was separated into two well-defined camps.” The battle was eventually put to a stop by principal A.H. McDougall. A healthy rivalry continues to exist between the two schools today.
By the 1930s, enrolment eclipsed 1,300 students – more than could fit in the main assembly hall. This growth brought greater recognition from the OCI board, and in 1931, Glebe Collegiate Institute became its own entity, separate from Lisgar. Glebe continued to make great strides that decade. In 1932, the Glebe Science Club – the first high school science club in Ontario and one of the first in Canada – was formed. Male and female athletic teams continued to do well too. Men’s football and basketball won 14 and 15 Eastern Ontario Secondary School Association (EOSSA) championships respectively between the mid-1920s and mid-1940s. Women’s basketball and track teams also claimed multiple EOSSA championships in the 1930s.
The Second World War led to a steep decline in attendance, as many students and teachers signed up for military service. Life at the school changed significantly too. Lesson plans included topics such as map reading, Morse code and meteorology. Twice a week, students marched, practised bandaging and held air raid drills. Glebe students also raised money to support the war effort. The fighting had a devasting impact on GCI and the Glebe community. According to Serson, a total of 198 Glebe students and teachers died in the Second World War.
The school grew in the years following the war. In 1967, the High School of Commerce – which had shared the building with GCI since 1929 – moved to its new site at 300 Rochester Street. While the space was briefly filled by the Eastern Ontario Institute of Technology, it was soon taken over by GCI.
Student voices acquired greater prominence in later decades with the creation of the student newspaper, Novae Res, in 1965. Initially started by students, the paper became part of an accredited journalism course overseen and supported by teachers during the 1970s and early 1980s. Novae Res continued to publish until the early 2000s. Its successor, Glebe Gazette, was started by students just a few years ago. Major educational changes came when the school introduced its bilingual program in 1972. GCI was one of many Ontario schools that incorporated French-language training into its curriculum following the passage of the federal government’s Official Languages Act (1969) and Ontario’s Official Languages in Education Program.
Glebe students continued to excel in academics and extracurricular activities. During the late 1980s and early 1990s, Glebe’s physics team finished in the top three in the Sir Isaac Newton competition nine times. The robotics team has had similar success since the mid-1990s, placing in the top three in nine national competitions. Between 2006 and 2012, local newspapers ranked GCI as the top sports high school in the Ottawa-Carleton region four times.
During his speech at the school’s opening ceremony, R.H. Grant remarked that “it was not stone or steel that made a school but something living and real, the spirit of the school.” That has certainly been the case at GCI. Over the past century, students, teachers and staff have shaped GCI into the school that it is today. This year’s 100th anniversary provides a great opportunity to reflect on its history and to imagine what is ahead for the school’s next century.
Blake Butler is a Glebe resident and history PhD candidate at Western University.
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