By Andrew Waldron
It’s election season again. You may ask: who were our earlier representatives? Did they live in the ward? Were they career politicians? Did they have the same urban issues that challenge the city today?
This election year will hopefully be a year of change. But if we dig back into this ward’s history, we discover that one of our long-standing representatives was M. Aristide Bélanger. Living to over ninety, Aristide witnessed the transformation of Ottawa as a capital from his long-time home at 208 Bolton St. in Lowertown.
Born in Rigaud Quebec, as a young boy he moved with his parents, Napoleon and Rose, to Ottawa, where he eventually became a clerk with the federal Department of Agriculture. At 27, he was the first tenant of his landlord and neighbour, M. Ernest Chabot, one of the Queen’s printers from a notable Lévis family who was able to build a substantial and unique Edwardian home on a vacant property beside Cathcart Square. It is a very rare terrace that was designed with two stacked flats beside the landlord’s home.
In the early 1920s, Aristide, his wife and seven children eventually moved from his upstairs apartment into his landlord’s unit, which he purchased after M. Chabot had moved a few streets over. Aristide and Albina, with their brood, became a prominent family in Lowertown after Aristide decided to run for election as a trustee on the local separate school board.
Oddly enough, as a trustee, he was opposed to vaccines. “He did not believe in inoculating children with matter which might be poisonous for all they knew.” If mandatory vaccines were insisted upon in the school, he’d withdraw them. Even then, there were anti-vaxxers!
Like many local politicians, he began with the school board and then jumped into municipal politics when in 1926 he ran for alderman as it was then called; at that time it was an unpaid position. Today few Ontario municipalities still have two representatives per ward, but in 1926, that was the common way to represent a ward.
Aristide won, followed by his fellow alderman, Joseph Landriault. His ambition grew and he tried for the Board of Control–an elected paid executive to assist the mayor–in 1931 but lost by one vote. He accepted the defeat gracefully and continued as ward representative.
In 1936, he withdrew his name for Board of Control because under new federal rules he was unable to run due to a prohibition against any public servant receiving an honorarium over $500. (Interestingly, he added to the family’s income by opening the City Dairy of Ottawa in 1939, with several partners. The Dairy delivered milk locally until it closed in 1968.) Aristide continued as alderman until 1950.
Aristide and his family remained in Lowertown. He lived his life at 208 Bolton until he died at the ripe old age of 94. He was a founding member of the Notre-Dame Credit Union and helped with the National Baseball Team. Some of his children remained close by throughout his life.
Lowertown is often overshadowed by working class stories, but Lowertown was not a one-class neighbourhood. Many French-Canadians were public servants, like Aristide, who lived near to their offices along Sussex Drive and donated their free time to help manage the city.