From the desk of the Editor, this is a new column that will build over future issues. This Echo features a review by Michel Rossignol of a recent French language publication from the University of Ottawa which includes sections on Lowertown’s francophone population.
We aim to have more reviews of books written entirely in French as well as books available in both languages in future issues.
In this column, we feature a book written by Graham Gibbs who is happy to call Lowertown his home after years of living and travelling in other parts. As well we highlight several “coming of age” books – fiction and nonfiction –written in English by authors who spent many formative years in Lowertown.
We count on you to let us know of other books written by current Lowertown residents, as well as books written about Lowertown by former residents and others.
Current Lowertown resident, Graham Gibbs authored Five Ages of Canada: A History from Our First Peoples to Confederation (2016), a work that resulted from several long and numerous short trips in his their Canadian Roadtrek Class B camper van. From multiple visits to historic and archeological sites and from conversations with fellow Canadians, Gibbs concluded that Canada’s history could be described in five distinct and progressive eras – or “ages’ to use his term. From first inhabitants through to Confederation personalities, he chronicles the stories that shaped the country.
The first age introduces Canada’s first inhabitants: the Palaeo-Indians from Northern Asia, their descendants, and the First Nations and Inuit peoples of today. The second age began in the early 1500s when fishing fleets from European nations spent their summers fishing off the shores Newfoundland. (Newfoundland tourist officials might not agree to when this all started.)
A century later, the third age began with the first permanent English and French settlements in the Atlantic Provinces and Quebec which led to the ensuing battle for dominion between England and France. The fourth age covers the fur trade that was responsible for the exploration, mapping and eventual settlement of the west. Lastly, the fifth age, “The Road to Confederation,” is the story of Sir John A. Macdonald, Sir George-Étienne Cartier and the other Fathers of Confederation.
Graham has shared their coast-to-coast adventures on his website: www.grahamgibbsmycanada.ca (Graham can be contacted via his website). His book is available at the boutique of the Canadian Museum of History, Books on Beechwood and available online via Friesen Press:
Former Lowertown residents have supplied some wonderful stories about growing up in Lowertown.
Brian Doyle wrote Angel Square (1984) a mystery that is solved by a young Lowertown boy named Tommy with help from his friends. The author who lived during his youth on Cobourg Street where the Patro/City of Ottawa building is now located writes about the young Catholics, Protestants and Jews who live near Anglesea Square, now renamed Jules Morin Park. Through the eyes of Tommy, a student at York Street Public School, the reader sees the good and the bad of a Lowertown (and larger Ottawa) at the end of the Second World War. Several versions of plays based on his novel have been produced for amateur school and professional theatre performances. The book was also made into a movie that won three Genie award in 1990.
Robert Fontaine’s The Happy Time (1945) features a young boy Bibi living on Friel Street in the 1920s surrounded by French-and Scottish family members. Fontaine’s father worked for several decades as a musician in Ottawa, playing at various theatres and at the Chateau Laurier. Bibi’s adventures take him to many familiar locations in and around the city. The book was made into a movie in 1952 movie and a 1968 musical on Broadway.
Doris Lee-Momy wrote both Farewell, My Bluebell: A Vignette of Lowertown (1998) and Coming of Age in Lowertown: A sequel to Farewell, My Bluebell. Her vignettes about the people, businesses, schools, churches and other elements of her immediate neighbourhood reveal a vibrant tight knit community. The author was born at 137 King Edward Avenue during the Second World War and she witnessed the end of a way of life and of her home when Lowertown was severely changed by urban renewal.
Lower Town: A Novel by Darren Jerome First Class Press, 2014 “Step back in time almost 200 years, to the new-hewn streets of Lower Town in the time of the Shiners’ War. Old Bytown comes alive through this story of two Irish brothers, who in their hearts, lives, and fates are as different from one another as all the opposing forces around them.”
Norman Levine (short story) and Johanne McDuff, (photographs) collaborated with Glenn Cheriton (publisher) to produce this small booklet title In Lower Town (1977). This small booklet — which begins with Levine’s words “When I was a kid we lived in Lower Town, Ottawa” — narrates his life as part of a Jewish community and ends with a description of the destruction of the Rideau Convent. The photographs tell the story of 1970s Lowertown as it is recovering from urban renewal.
Sylvia Bodovsky Kershman, author of Life Lines and Other Lines (2016) grew up at 321 St Andrew Street in a household strongly connected to the large Jewish population in Lowertown. She writes about her family life and the institutions that supported it, her father’s business as a butcher in the Byward Market and her own forays into business, as well as the larger sphere of the Ottawa community.
If you know of other books, plays, and so forth by people with a history of Lowertown or books about our community, please send you suggestions to echo@lowertown-basseville.ca