 |
| 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). |
