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| ...Empress of the Escarpment |
Victoria Avenue would be renamed "Empress" later in the same decade. I don't have the exact date for the change but a newspaper mention (property sale, "unobstructable view") puts it no later than 1907. Given that Victoria adopted the title "Empress of India" in the spring of 1876, a 20th Century act of recognition seems oddly belated. I can only guess that "Empress" was chosen to dispel confusion between the avenue and downtown's Queen Street, Queen Victoria Street (now simply "Victoria", in New Edinburgh) and the oft-misspelled and mispronounced Vittoria Street just west of Parliament Hill.
Goad's innocent-looking two-word notation in the lower right corner of our image raises interesting questions about this part of our city. "Burnt District" refers to the great Ottawa-Hull Fire of April 1900, less than a year before this map was prepared. What (if any) role did the cliff serve as a firebreak? What houses were destroyed and how were they rebuilt?
An iconic piece of brickwork dominates the right-hand side of this map. The signature angled wings of the "House of Mercy" Maternity Hospital still stand, now the oldest part of the St. Vincent hospital complex. Most of the smaller houses shown here have since been demolished, though a pair of buildings flanking the north side of Primrose at Empress remain.
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| 85 Primrose Avenue |
Coloured blue (for stone) on the map, 85 Primrose is labeled "convent". Its rank and file windows befit the conformity and anonymity of its one-time residents. The building is now Annex E of the Bruyère Research Institute. Oddly, I can find no discussions of heritage status for this building.
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| 69 Primrose Avenue |
Goad portrays 69 Primrose as a solid-brick "two-and-a-half", which largely agrees with what we see today, allowing for a few renovations. In 1901 this was the home of one Richard Lester "bidr", by which I think the Might Directory meant "bldr". The address is now associated with the Champlain Hospice Palliative Care Program.
Empress Avenue continues north for a short distance past these two buildings, looking very much like a dead end. On close inspection however, this cul de sac marks the top of a staircase wending down the cliff-side to a final block of the avenue, one of "Hidden Ottawa's" delightful features.
Another bit of renaming — "Maria" at the top of the map was the original name for Laurier Avenue West, shown here likewise leaping, as it were, over the cliff. The original footpath down the slope is long-gone. Instead, Slater now hugs the base of the cliff to a point where it joins the western limb of Albert Street. Thus the Empress is reunited with her lamented lost love, Prince Albert.
*Victoria (the Queen) did not leap over a cliff. She met her end with quiet dignity, in bed at Osborne House on the Isle of Wight, attended by her son and successor King Edward VII, her eldest grandson the Emperor Wilhelm II of Germany, and her little dog Turi, the Pomeranian.
“I am his Highness' Dog at Kew. Pray tell me Sir, whose Dog are you?”
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| Queen Victoria, 1900 |
