Jean-Yves Pelletier, Ottawa Notre-Dame Cemetery: An Historic Cemetery of National Importance Established in 1872/Le Cimetière Notre-Dame d’Ottawa: cimetière historique d’importance nationale, Québec : Éditions GID, 2009.
Jean-Yves Pelletier has a long history of research and analysis highlighting francophone stories in Ottawa and in Ontario. He also has a link to Lowertown, where his grandfather once lived while teaching at École Brébeuf on Anglesea Square. This publication focuses on Notre-Dame, the largest Catholic cemetery in the area. This is the place where Prime Minister Wilfrid Laurier and other notables like master photographer Yousuf Karsh are buried, but it is also the place where multiple ordinary families and religious orders associated with Lowertown erected grave markers. The book is like a walk through Lowertown featuring mayors like Bingham and Payment; entrepreneurs like Lemay and Major; historians like Lamoureux and Tremblay; doctors like St-Jean and Valade; lawyers like Champagne and Vincent; religious figures like Bruyère and Duhamel; athletes like Barber and Drouin; and so many others. Read and discover!
These works (both English and French) can be borrowed or consulted at the Ottawa Public Library or the French version can be purchased online at Renaud-Bray
Historical Portraits: The National Cemetery of Canada and a National Historic Site/Portraits historiques: le Cimetière national du Canada et un lieu historique national. Beechwood Funeral, Cemetery & Cremation Services, 2023.
Available online in English at: https://beechwoodottawa.ca/sites/default/files/2023-05/Historical%20Portraits%20Book%20-%20Full%20English-2023_0.pdf
Available online in French at: https://beechwoodottawa.ca/sites/default/files/2023-05/Historical%20Portraits%20Book%20-%20Full%20French-2023_0.pdf
In 1980, the Beechwood Cemetery Foundation began producing a booklet with profiles for some well-known individuals buried in the place since 1873. The booklet now includes multiple biographies of varying length highlighting politicians, writers, explorers and entrepreneurs. Some of the people profiled have links to Lowertown: Prime Minister Robert Borden and his wife Laura Bond who lived on Wurtemburg Street; William Pittman Lett, onetime journalist espousing the anti-Catholic Orange cause and later Ottawa’s longest serving civic clerk who lived on Dalhousie Street; Alvira Lockwood, first female photographer and later artist, who lived and worked on Rideau Street. Browse and learn!