Rise and Fall and Rise

In Advance of the Broken Skull — date, artist unknown

For many us, the word "hill" calls up the image of a roughly conical land-form, like a mountain but smaller. Or a breast, but larger. It might be topped with blueberry bushes, possibly interspersed with thrills. Or we could think of something to be climbed, both and down — a more subjective, functional definition. Our illustration does a fair job of wedding the two, even as some of us wonder why anyone would dig a well at the top of a hill.

In time, we'll encounter settings in which people do dig well on top of hills, or on hillsides. Nonetheless, some authors argue that the first line of Jack and Jill  subverts the expectation of finding water at the bottom of a hill to signal its young audience that they are being told a nonsense story, an airy froth in which a little boy can crack his skull open on a rock, then run home to be healed with no more than a bandage of brown paper soaked in malt vinegar.

On first hearing that Ottawa has a "Nanny Goat Hill", many people will forgivably picture a cartoon hill, topped not by a well, or by berry-bushes, but by a grass-munching goat, her udder close to bursting with milk soon to be turned into rounds of cheese, each bearing a label with a picture of a cartoon hill, topped not by a well...

Nanny Goat Hill is no such thing. If there was a goat, she's long gone. Nor is there a cartoon cone with a pinnacle to which one can confidently point and say "there a goat once stood, her udder close to bursting...".

But if the measure of a hill is in the climb, try walking (or cycling) up Somerset Street West, from Little Italy, up through Chinatown to Bronson Avenue. And should a cliff be your criterion, consider the limestone escarpment overlooking LeBreton Flats. Fall off that and no amount of brown paper or vinegar will goat-herd your brains back into your skull.

What are we to make of this "hill" sans peak, sans goat, with half of its flanks unaccounted for? It has no Wikipedia entry and its name only appears on Google Maps appended to a vest-pocket community garden at the west end of Laurier Avenue. Historically, newspapers hardly mention it. And still, it's a thing...

...une chose

Two Small Things

Deux choses...

"So." — as everyone has taken to saying before saying anything worth saying — this is a blog about the history and geography of a small, loosely defined Ottawa neighbourhood, affectionately named "Nanny Goat Hill". There are two things you should know about that which follows.

Thing One: After some twenty-two years, I'm moving from my apartment in Ottawa's "Golden Triangle" to one just west of the downtown core, close to if not actually within the bounds of said  Hill — a loosely defined place, as I was saying. I look forward to learning as much  as I can about my new home-base and I might as well share my findings with the handful of people who care about such things.

Thing Two: I've lately become obsessed with photographing houses. I hope to include many such pictures in this blog, but over the past summer I've gone more or less blind, this thanks to a matched pair of very agressive cataracts. Surgery is scheduled for this winter, so here's looking forward to looking forward again.

D. Chouinard