Groupe Claude Lauzon wins again – City Council grants demolition permit for over objections from LCA, Heritage Ottawa, and neighbours.
By Liz MacKenzie
On January 26, City Council brought down the axe on 281-283 Cumberland, the last of five heritage buildings that Groupe Lauzon asked and succeeded to demolish. The Council did not have the fortitude to insist that Groupe Lauzon preserve it as part of their proposed infill project at Murray and Cumberland – Our Lady’s School site. The building is a little workers’ cottage double, still salvageable and still providing affordable rental housing. With ingenuity, it could have been integrated into the new condo design, but there was no resolve.
In 2005, Groupe Claude Lauzon asked City Council for permission to demolish five buildings designated under part IV of the Heritage Conservation Act. City Council refused. Over the years, through deliberate neglect, unchecked by City officials, these buildings were allowed to deteriorate and crumble. They became a blot on our community. Two have been rebuilt, two have been lost.
The Built Heritage Committee was sympathetic when neighbours, members of the Lowertown Community Association, and Heritage Ottawa spoke in defense of the building. However, these community groups are not the people that staff or City Council heeds. Groupe Lauzon has their ear and the outcome at Council was sadly predictable.
The website Skyscrapers weighed in with unsettling ignorance about the meaning of heritage, the purpose of Heritage Conservation Districts, and the legislation in place to protect buildings within them. The Skyscraper gang is about bricks and mortar – but heritage is not just about bricks and mortar. The demeaning comments about 281-283 Cumberland are a sobering reminder of this knowledge gap.
“preserving an old cottage because three francophone widows lived in it doesn’t qualify as heritage..
“CMON, even if this is where some seamstress and landlady made their living, look at these buildings. They’re absolutely HIDEOUS! Ugly paneling [sic], 2 doors and 7 windows. This rationale is indefensible.”
This little house on Cumberland dates from the 1860s, shortly after Bytown became the City of Ottawa in 1855. Vast fortunes were being made in the lumbering, milling, construction and transportation industries. By 1871, the mills were producing more than 200 million board-feet of lumber each year.
Workers – many of them francophone – who toiled in these highly lucrative but dangerous trades were poorly paid and lived in humble conditions. John H. Taylor’s Ottawa, an Illustrated History, Table VII shows that in 1885, the predominately francophone By Ward made up 18.1 % of the of the City’s population, and in 1885 accounted for 37.9% of deaths.
The English establishment feared the voting power of the French workers and re-drew ward boundaries to dilute this power. The workers were denied government positions, life insurance, and access to banking and education opportunities.
There was poverty, and there were widows; many, many widows who had families to support and little or no income. Through ingenuity, hard work and determination, many succeeded to build decent housing and run sustainable businesses. At 283 Cumberland, we know that Adelaide Marenger, Marie Desilets, and Hermiline Brunette turned to self-employment to sustain their families. As widows, they engaged in enterprises that could be conducted from their homes with revenue generating businesses as landladies, storekeepers, and dressmakers.
We should celebrate them. Are their accomplishments lesser than those of business and political cliques? Their homes demand as much respect as the grand homes of the Billings and Pinheys for whom so many of the poor labored. These are homes celebrated not for their architectural grandeur, but for the spirit and stories they embody.
What will we lose when 281-283 Cumberland is demolished? We lose a monument to the story of poor, hardworking Lowertown families, who built this city brick by brick, stone by stone for the industrialists that they served. Who will remember their stories when all the traces are destroyed?
Proposed new construction brings structural threat to heritage houses
The north wing of Groupe Lauzon’s development plans for Our Lady’s School on St. Patrick Street pushes between two heritage buildings. Engineering geologist Ted Lawrence raised concerns to the Planning Committee about dangers posed to 228 St. Patrick Street. and 277 Cumberland Street. This will be an important issue to watch when the site plan is presented, as the new construction has a high potential to threaten the structural integrity of the two buildings. Lawrence proposed a separate infill on the vacant St. Patrick Street lot to respect the heritage infill guidelines and to protect these small buildings.
The concern is heightened by the knowledge that recent residential construction with two levels of underground parking at 317-321 St. Andrew Street caused severe adverse impacts to adjacent buildings under similar circumstances.