An Old Yellow Tongue

...seen sticking up lewdly from the bottom left.

This is part of a map prepared by Charles E. Goad for his 1878 Ottawa Insurance Plans. Unlike his detailed "Goad Maps" which portray individual buildings, it's a contour map, great for spotting stuff like hills, our current obsession. Let's get oriented...

The signature footprints of the Parliament buildings are hard to miss. Of course, the Centre Block shown here was destroyed by fire in February, 1916 and replaced over the following decade. Only the Parliamentary Library (the round part overlooking the cliff) remains from that original structure.

Though I've cropped this map to focus on Ottawa west of the Rideau Canal, two features along that rudely clipped right margin are notable. The vacant plot east of Elgin Street and south of Laurier Avenue (here called "Maria") is Cartier Square, where the Drill Hall would be built a year after his map was prepared. The marching field to the west of that building is now the City Hall campus.

One block north of Cartier Square, a small watery-blue finger pokes into the image. This was the western half of a turning basin carved into the Rideau Canal to accommodate the larger boats carrying cargo to warehouses and coal bins on what is now the National Arts Centre property. This artificial pond extended from  the northeast corner of now-Confederation Park, across the Canal into the now-Shaw Centre conference halls. When the Canal was first built, this area was a swampy "beaver meadow". Indeed, early military engineers toyed with the idea of turning the land now occupied by Confederation Park and the Lord Elgin Hotel into a reservoir — this was well before anyone though that "Fort" Bytown might grow into a city of any size.

The southern and western edges of the map are as Goad intended. Neither edge corresponds with Ottawa's city limits at the time and each discrepancy tells it's own story.

When Charles Goad prepared this set of maps, Ottawa (officially) extended as far south as Gladstone Avenue (then called "Ann"). Goad chose to cut things off well north of that, at Lisgar Street. Ottawa's "suburban" development would soon reach south, across Stewarton and into the Glebe, but as of 1878 this was waste ground with marshy tendencies, ill-suited to cultivation and sparsely populated. By whatever agreement between Goad and the City Fathers, these fields were deemed not yet worth documenting.

Contrast this with Goad's western boundary, where rail lines serviced the lumber mills of the Chaudiere Islands and spurred the growth of LeBreton Flats, Mount Sherwood, and Rochesterville. These developments, paired with a dynamic topology, compelled Goad to extend his map past the then city limit of Bronson Avenue (formerly the "Concession Road").  Where is this Concession Road on our map?  It runs northward through the yellow, tongue-shaped feature jutting up from the bottom-left. And whose yellow tongue is that? It's the Nanny Goat's, stuck half-in and half-out of then-Ottawa.

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With its festive hues, one would expect a colour key to accompany this map but such is not the case — perhaps Goad anticipated later black & white reproductions? Instead, we are told the following...

Contour lines 70', 85', 100', 115', 130' and 145' above datum  (lowest sill at the Rideau Canal locks)

That is to say that there's an interval of 15 feet (4.6 metres) of elevation between contours, where the reference point ("datum") is 0 feet at the sill of the canal's lowest lock on the shore of the Ottawa River. And if you squint really hard, you can just make out those elevations, scrunched up against their respective contours. Let's use the yellow areas to compare Nanny Goat Hill with another feature we all know well.

We aren't helped by Goad's draftsman's ones, which look like his fours, nor his threes resembling his fives. Still, some head-twisting (and squinting) confirm that the Nanny Goat formation sits at 130 feet above datum, at no point rising above 145 feet. Compare this flattened, yellow acreage with Parliament Hill — whose tight contours describe a lop-sided but distinct cone, surging up toward the Centre Block.

We tend to think of Parliament Hill as something that happens north of Wellington Street, but Goad's map reminds us of its true extent and of its roundness. Emerging from the valley levels of Laurier West and Slater, the hill rises toward a gentle southeast flank (pale blue), where construction (the LRT) and gas-line installation (a certain fashionable restaurant) still unearth skeletons left over from Bytown's first boneyard.

Climbing higher, a patch of yellow tells us that the Parliamentary front lawn matches the elevation of the Nanny Goat plateau, as it partly encircles an eggshell-coloured table-land, this last rising above 145 feet and creating a dais for the Centre Block.

Goad saw no reason to extend his 1878 maps as far as Somerset Street, but as Centretowners know, the ground south of that roadway falls off quite sharply. The old cartographer  has drawn (most of) the Nanny Goat's triangular mesa, sitting at a not-insignificant elevation of between 130 and 145 feet and matching that of the Parliamentary lawn. We should note that Goad depicts this elevation as exceeding that of Sparks/Bronson cliff, Nepean Point and Rideau Falls. The Nanny Goat was not a hill to be sneezed at.

That which isn't

Look into the void.

This post finds me well-installed in my new digs, with one leg sadly propped on my desk à la Jimmy Stewart in Rear Window thanks to a crippling attack of gout. For the time being, my computer will have to stand in for Stewart's honking big telephoto lens as I explore my new surroundings from the confines of my apartment, Thus availed with long hours to over-think the whens and wheres of Nanny Goat Hill, a perhaps odd plan occurs to me.

Fans of CSI and Dexter will easily pick out the "void" on the left side of the (obviously staged) blood-spatter field in the above photo. The blood "shadow" bears the clear outline of a sturdy hunting knife, since removed from the scene — a telling piece of negative evidence, as it were.

So. what if we could infer the boundaries of Nanny Goat Hill by delineating that which it isn't — a "Nanny Goat Void"? For example, if NGH lies immediately to the west of the downtown core (which apparently it does) then we can arguably set the eastern edge of NGH alongside the core's western edge. We've already somewhat established that NGH lies around an axis running from Bronson at Somerset, north to Bronson at Laurier. By identifying all the neighbourhoods surrounding this strip of land, we should be able to delineate a void in their midst and that void, roughly, will be Nanny Goat Hill.

Of course, this plan is iffy from the get-go. Neighbourhoods come and go — sometimes they overlap or even sit one inside the other. Nor are they always carved in geopolitical stone. Some boundaries are more obvious than others — Downtown is definitely south of the Ottawa River just as Overbrook certainly looks like it's north of the Queensway. A neighbourhood may be a designated "study area" or part of a business improvement zone, but neither necessarily respects local, traditional borders.

No matter,  let's give this a shot, starting with our aforementioned downtown core. Ottawa's version of a finance and admin district. Wikipedia may not be the final word in all things but it can be a good place to gather (indeed shape) consensus. Here we are told that Ottawa's finance-and-admin district is bounded by the Ottawa River, the Rideau Canal, Gloucester Street and Bronson Avenue.

Ouch. If the core extends as far west as Bronson, does it shoulder Nanny Goat Hill right up against the cliff in Dow's drawing (see previous post)? I've always thought of Bank Street as the core's western edge, given how much of the property past Bank was once residential. Or is that just me living in the past? Of course, we must concede that the core has expanded westward. Still, I'd like to suggest a compromise boundary somewhere between Percy Street and Bay Street. Bay in particular marks much of the current transition from hotels and offices on its east side, to a burgeoning forest of apartment towers beyond. And Percy has some intriguing topology worth checking out.

Chinatown offers NHG a clear and convenient southern boundary — as long as we define Chinatown strictly as a Somerset Street business district rather than a somewhat more nebulous "ethnic" neighbourhood. And while we're talking about hills, notice how all the land south of this Chinatown strip slopes predictably downward — something else for us to get back to.

Heading west, Chinatown abuts Little Italy, which extends north along Preston Street, from Carling Avenue towards LeBreton Flats reaching into the very shadow of Nanny Goat's cliffs. When I first moved away from home, some school-friends and I shared an apartment just north of Somerset at 80 Spruce Street (#2, where for one glorious winter, sex, LSD and Ouija boards reigned supreme). Our building sat near the bottom of a steep climb running from Preston Street uphill to Rochester, then Booth... and beyond, to the edge of a plateau. That plateau (or a part thereof) features the old St. Vincent Hospital at Cambridge North and Primrose. The hospital itself overlooks a cliff that's contiguous with Dow's Nanny Goat Cliff. Surely this modest acreage must be part of NGH.

So far our map of NGH features a question mark to the east, Somerset Street to the south and a jagged escarpment to the west. But any hope for our "if not this then that" criterion falls flat as we turn northward.

Abutting the Ottawa River, the Supreme Court /LAC grounds north of Wellington were the site of Upper Town, Bytown's original posh-toff enclave. Well-removed from the Lower Town rabble east of the Canal, the cliff-side portion of Upper Town nevertheless became the first Ottawa neighbourhood to suffer wholesale obliteration at the hands of the Feds as the "Parliamentary Precinct" expanded westward.

The land immediately south of Wellington slopes down from Parliament Hill, and again from a proud outcrop at the west end of Sparks Street. We can sense the drama of this arrangement by walking south along Bronson from Sparks, descending a steep bank until we reach the corner of Slater. Ahead of us looms the "Techwall" graffiti wall. Behind this concrete retaining structure, the northern tip of a great Centretown plateau rises along the western end of Laurier Avenue.

This NGH thing is starting to come together — in the shape of a flat-topped hill.

Jimmy Stewart is eager to explore his neighbour(hood).

Caprice

The Ottawa Journal,  February 24 1971

This whimsical drawing of a boy climbing Nanny Goat is the work of "Dow", who was for many years the in-house go-to illustrator at The Ottawa Journal. I was introduced to him by a friend with a Yorkshire accent, which led me to misunderstand that "Del" was a cartoonist at the Journal in addition to the man who signed his work "Dow". But no, there was no Del, just Dow.

I can't find any biographical notes on the man and somehow I'm not surprised. Dow (I never learned his real name) was not a prized ornament at social gatherings. Pale-skinned and scrawny, he looked to be past his best-before date by the time we met. His gaze was furtive, his gait a hunched scurry. Long, thinning (once blond?) hair framed a bespectacled face dominated by a nose so distorted and bulbous (rosacea?) that even the charitable viewer would wonder "Can't they can just cut the damned thing off?" I can picture him climbing aboard a Bank Street bus wearing a grimy trench-coat, though this last detail may be a false memory.

Appearance notwithstanding. Dow was a gift to the Journal and to the people of Ottawa. Almost every day one, sometimes two of his drawings would give pause and make thousands of us smile. Dow wasn't interested in skewering politicians, or anyone for that matter. His subjects were most often local "human interest" stories. Dow was sharp observer of people — his quick, sure lines rendered his characters with kindness and affection, often mid-gesture. Shoulders would pivot, glances were bewildered, smiles knowing —  children ran and cars screeched, objects flew through the air. Dow's little pictures always drew the reader's eye to whatever story he'd been asked to illustrate. And after you'd read the story, you would always go back to his drawing and nod. And like I said, smile.

The above drawing (taken from the Journal's "Be Heard" feature) illustrates the ideas that 1) there were indeed goats on the hill and that 2) the area's northwestern escarpment was and is a climb best left the young and the athletic, or to goats. Regarding item #1, anyone who has seen John Taylor's Ottawa, An Illustrated History will remember the lovely period watercolor he chose for the cover. It shows several head of cattle being driven past Parliament Hill and toward the Dufferin Bridge on their way to the Byward Market. If we once had cattle on the east end of Wellington Street, goats on the west end shouldn't surprise us.

Unlike so many of Ottawa's place names therefore, "Nanny Goat Hill" recognises neither royalty nor  peerage nor community prominence. It simply recalls a farm animal scampering up and down a cliff.

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I first met with the "Nanny Goat Hill" name some time in the mid-to-late 1970s. This was when Sunday brunch was still considered a cutting-edge fashion statement, a see-and-be-seen affair — eggs Benedict, croissants and fruit salad, servers scurrying to refill bottomless café au lait, mimosas and, for the truly piss-elegant, a Kir Royale or two.

Every so often, the in crowd would decamp en masse to the next hot venue. This migration typically played out over three weekends. The avant garde would sniff out the new bistro or whatever on the first Sunday, the Beautiful People would flock to it on the second, and the sad-sack wannabes would trickle in on the third.

It was in the prelude to one such hejira that a friend and brunch avant-gardiste invited me to tag along and sample the Sunday scene at a new restaurant... something something Nanny Goat Hill something whatever. The eatery had opened in a newly completed commercial building on the north side of Somerset, not far from Bronson (a bit west of, I think) and set on an actual slope. I can't find the building any more. Did it burn down? At any rate, my friend judged the food, the decor and the clientele to be blandness incarnate and not worth a second visit. I had to agree.

Not long afterward, a handful of us were invited to what became known as "Stephanie's Human Curry Luncheon" at her townhouse just off Island Park Drive (a peculiar story for another time). Well settled in at a long teak table, we looked forward to our main course, getting rather too sloshed on Beaujolais Noveau as the early winter sun streamed into the dining room. Someone mentioned "that Nanny Goat Hill restaurant" — "Why yes, we've been there" my friend piped up. flashing me an eager smile, "and trust me, don't bother!" Conversation turned to the restaurant's peculiar name as Stephanie wafted into the room, uncorking a crisp Chardonnay ("to sober us up") and pointed out that "it's a real name. The hill. It's called that." Which, frankly, was more than anyone else present that day could offer.

If this anecdote seems as pointless as it is gratuitous. well that's my point. Between Dow's drawing of a cliff, the position of the Nanny Goat Hill Community Garden at the corner of Bronson and Laurier, and that of an erstwhile restaurant on Somerset Street, the whereabouts of our neighbourhood is drifting into focus.

On the other hand,  the conversation at Stephanie's luncheon demonstrates that compared to, say Rockcliffe or Barrhaven or even Old Ottawa East, most Ottawans had/have little idea of what a Nanny Goat Hill is, nor as the francos among us might say, ce que ça mange en hiver. Well, we have all winter to find out.