By Nancy Miller Chenier
circa 1910
East of King Edward Avenue in Lowertown, the name Beausoleil is attached to a street (Beausoleil Drive), a housing cooperative (Parc Beausoleil), a section of Ottawa Community Housing homes Beausoleil Community) and a childcare centre (Centre Éducatif Beausoleil). This is the area where 1960s urban renewal dislocated a predominately French-speaking population. And the tributes to Alexandre Beausoleil, who was parish priest at Ste Anne from 1897 to 1903 are significant.
Although he served in other eastern Ontario parishes, Father Beausoleil started and ended his priesthood in Lowertown. Shortly after his ordination in 1888, he was made director of the choir at Notre Dame Basilica and when he died in 1931, he was the chaplain at the Ottawa General Hospital. A defender of francophone educational rights, he was a founding member of the Association canadienne-française pour l’éducation de l’Ontario and an opponent of the Ontario Regulation 17 that restricted education in French after two years of schooling.