Back to the Garden

When I started this blog I mentioned that one of the few existing properties or institutions explicitly bearing the Nanny Goat Hill name is a community garden at the northeast corner of Laurier West and Bronson avenues.

Anyone who visits the garden will notice that the plots are ringed and divided by retaining walls of varying height and some apparent age. These stone barriers, buttressed here and there by slatherings of concrete, once defined property boundries and held within them an infill of topsoil. This allowed lawns to be cultivated around erstwhile houses, atop of what was, by nature, a rugged limestone bluff. What do we know about those original properties? Let's start with Goad's insurance map for 1878 and try to picture the corner (indeed the whole block) in it's heyday.

after Goad, 1878 — sheet 44, block 271

The stone house (shown in blue) at #571 Maria (now Laurier W., lower left corner) sits on what is now the upper level of the NGH garden. The gap to its right corresponds to the garden's lower level. The house was built on a prestigious bluff — the land to the north and east of it slopes downhill, from 78 metres ASL down to 72, a drop of about 20 feet across the block in both directions.

Notice the wooden (grey) shed-and-stable to the upper right of the house (the stable is the larger section marked with and "X" — it's the only one on the block). Notice that this out-building is as large, or larger than the rest of the actual houses on the block. Finally, notice that most of these latter houses are built of wood, (yellow) and only a handful of brick (red). A lone stone house at Bay and Maria isn't much larger than the rear wing of #571. Oh, and one more notice — 571's outbuilding is downhill and at some remove from the "house on the hill" a version of the "upstairs/downstairs" principle. It seems the property straddled the block, backing onto Slater Street.

The previous paragraph thoroughly flogs the notion that by 1878, block 271 was a dramatic example of a prestige gradient emerging as old Upper Town spread southward, morphing into a newer, more working-class Centretown. But who was the laird of that lofty lot at the west end of later-to-be Laurier?

There's a bit of a numbering discrepancy between the maps and the directories. What Goad calls "571 Maria", A.S. Woodburn calls "575" — both in 1875 and 1884 (Goad would eventually go with 575 as well). Woodburn's intent is very clear when he lists the same resident in both years at 575, followed immediately by "Concession st intersects" — it's the house on the corner, occupied, he tells us, by "Clemow Francis, coal mercht etc".

 Francis Clemow, 1821-1902

"Coal mercht etc" doesn't quite address the scope of Mr. Clemow's life and eventual career in business (water, gas and eventually electricity) and politics (culminating in a senate seat). Of course, "Clemow" and "Powell" (Francis's wife Margaret) are well known street names in Ottawa's Glebe neighbourhood, roughly a mile to the south. According to the late Christa Zeller Thomas...

Two of the Glebe’s most fascinating streets surely are Clemow and Powell avenues, because they are not just exceptionally good-looking (wide boulevards, grand old homes, plenty of trees) but also because they exude an aura of influence and prestige. Even without knowing anything about the men and women behind these two names, one can easily surmise that they were part of Ottawa’s elite. But reading about Francis Clemow, the family patriarch, I find that counting him among Ottawa’s early “in” crowd is almost an understatement: the man was such a wheeler and dealer, so “firmly entrenched in the sinecures of the city corporation,” as John Taylor observed in his illustrated history of Ottawa, that it seems as though he had a hand in a great many of the city’s affairs...

Please read Ms. Thomas's account of Clemow's wheeling and dealing here. Interestingly, she states — "In 1847, Francis Clemow married Margaret Powell of the Perth Powells [...] and thus the association of Clemow and Powell began. The couple lived in a mansion, “Hill and Dale”, on Maria Street (now Laurier Avenue)." And if "Hill and Dale" doesn't perfectly describe the hilltop house at Concession and Maria, with a "dale" behind it, running down toward Slater Street, well I don't know what does.

Although the couple owned property in the Glebe, the Might Directory for 1901 shows the Clemows living at Hill and Dale until at least 1901. Francis would die in 1902 and Margaret in 1907. The 1909 Might Directory lists their daughter, Miss Adelaide "Ada" H. Clemow, living alone in the house (by that time a Laurier W. address.) She and her cousin would eventually develop the Clemow/Powell Glebe property. She died in 1931, still at the family mansion. If you're curious, a discussion of the Glebe land (PDF, City of Ottawa) can be viewed here.

Miss Ada Clemow

But back to Centretown — one thing you should know about the buildings shown on the Goad map at the top of the page... every last one, including "Hill and Dale" has since been demolished.

*     *     *

Through the late 19th century and into the 20th, Centretown Ottawa continued to grow around the Clemow house. Here is Goad's take on block 271 from his 1912 reprint series, and OMG SINCE WHEN IS THIS AN INDUSTRIAL PARK???

after Goad 1912, sheet 44

This corner of sheet 44 shows block 271 east of the Clemow mansion. Not only is it well taken-up by (mostly) small wooden houses, many sporting brick veneer, but almost a third of the land east of Hill and Dale is given over to light industry. We see the G.E. Kingsbury ice-houses at 458 Slater (grey, upper left) and to its right, the Ottawa Electric Company's lumber yard. Whether the OEC was producing lumber or consuming it, I'm not sure, but let's face it, the stuff was everywhere back then. Facing onto Bay, whatever stood there before has been replaced by a seven-house brick row and, at #200, the R. Irving soda water factory — a stable attached to the rear of the building suggests they delivered their product straight from the bottling plant. Did they even have zoning back then?

Check out the generous lot at 553 Laurier, the one with the little wooden house and the stable out back. This property will eventually become the lower level of the NGH garden.

For whatever reason(s), Goad shunted the Clemow house onto the adjoining sheet for this series. Map 46 picks up from where #44 left off — here's a detail...

We can see 575 Laurier, solid, stony and symmetrical, with a wooden conservatory running off its west side — perfect for tea or evening drinks in summer. We also notice that the stable/coach-house/garage has been reconfigured slightly over the decades. Did someone spring for a motor car along way? If you enlarge the image and squint, you can see a six-foot high stone wall separating the estate from the rest of the block. And an eight-foot high stone wall along Slater. If you're curious as to where these walls met, stand between the two Victorian brick houses at 467 and 475 Slater and look directly across the street facing the graffiti wall.

Speaking of which — notice how Goad has drawn the Nanny Goat escarpment — on the west side of Bronson (north of the red brick "Fleck House") but not on the east behind the Clemow residence. He seems to be indicating a gentler slope at Hill and Dale, not the severe drop we now see at the Techwall graffiti/retaining concrete structure.

*     *     *

A parting shot from 1965 shows Hill and Dale with one foot in the grave and the other on a banana peel. I've outlined the land that would become the Nanny Goat Hill Community Garden in green.

via geoOttawa

The "dale", and the light industry directly east thereof, has given way to the Ottawa Technical High School playing field. A new retaining wall casts its sharp shadow along the south end of the basketball courts. A handful of the original working-class houses still face onto Laurier (upper right) while the Clemow house, its conservatory torn down, sits in a parking lot. It will soon disappear, as will the walk-up apartment block next to it. This flat-roofed building with its distinctive rear light-well (no, not a chimney shadow) was built some time before 1928 and demolished circa 2000. It made way for the lower NGH garden.

By way of a post-script, notice the apartment tower casting shade across Laurier near the bottom of the photo. Those are the Stonecliffe Apartments at 175 Bronson Avenue. Their lot was once the home of Ottawa businessman and mayor, C.T. Bate — a lost exemplar of Ottawa's historic "Bate Houses." Again, a story for another time.

584 Maria (in blue), across the street from the Clemows — Goad, 1878

92 Empress

A small house on a tiny lot uses heavy, bracketed cornices and confident window treatments to make a big statement. Its appearance on the Goad maps indicates construction some time between 1888 and 1912, while the Might Directory lists occupancy in 1909 (Charles T. Lawson, v.p. Thos Lawson & Sons Ltd, casting and molding). #92 may have been built in tandem with the larger double block next door — note the identical lintel-over-basement-window masonry.

140 Bronson Avenue

This 140 Bronson sits on a triangular patch of ground at the southwest corner of Slater Street, wedged into the base of the Nanny Goat cliff. You can see how it abuts the back-yard retaining wall of the of the old Alexander Fleck mansion just uphill at 593 Laurier West.

The steep grade of Bronson Avenue as it runs down to Slater required that #140's concrete foundation be poured in stepped levels — I count three across this facade. I wonder how well that base is grounded to the bedrock below, given that the north (to your right) side of the building slumps a tad, as evinced by some cracking brickwork and the slightly misaligned window frames. There has to be some scree and back-fill under there. This part of the Nanny Goat limestone grades into patches of glacial till, so at least Leda clay isn't an issue.

This vertiginous Google shot shows the relative positions of the Fleck house (left of center, signature cupola, busy roof-lines) and #140 (right of center, mostly flat roofs, improvised massing). Note the long peak-roofed section toward the back of the building. Aerial photos at geoOttawa give 140 Bronson a construction date some time after 1928. The escarpment continues on the east side of Bronson to become the Tech Wall graffiti wall.

Catherine Boucher (@bearswim on Twitter) adds  "...And providing some affordable housing. Leased from the City by @CCOChousing after Mike Harris killed the social housing programs. Built to be a furniture warehouse during WWII. Turned into (furnished) apts after the war."

42 Primrose Avenue

on the Southeast corner of Arthur

This little charmer does a good job of hiding behind its trees and shrubbery in summer, which is a shame for us. I believe this is what's called a "four-square" plan. They appeared in the US in the 1890s and were popular through the 1910s and 20s. Many Ottawa examples are smaller than their American counterparts and often dispense with the full-width front verandah typical of the style. Some four-squares (if indeed that is the correct term) in Old Ottawa East/South are positively tiny.

Goad 1912 shows an older house in this spot facing Arthur, scrunched up next to #9 (extant) so this one replaces the original structure. #42 doesn't appear in Might 1923, so it would have been built during or after that year.

Oh Hey, it's Another Map

With my left foot on the mend I've finally been able to scope out the neighbourhood in person. And with a fresh Borg implant in my right eye I can actually make out the contour lines on geoOttawa's interactive map of the city — hence the following...

This map covers much of same area as Goad's did in the previous post. The brown contour lines are calibrated in metres above sea level (ASL) — all contours, including the light brown "minor" lines, are two metres apart. As always, click on the image to view large.

You can see two yellow patches on the map. They don't exactly match the yellow areas on Goad's map but they are related. The lower patch is that part of Nanny Goat Hill which rises beyond 80 metres ASL.  The upper patch is Parliament Hill, where the elevation reaches the 80 metre mark just north of Wellington Street — think of the embankments directly behind the stone and iron fence. Three minor contours looping across the Parliamentary front lawn confirm that the Centre Block is built on an 86 metre ASL plateau. No other ground on this map reaches, let alone exceeds an 80 metre elevation.*

The red triangle demarks this walker's subjective impression of all that is NGH, its shape roughly echoing the "yellow tongue" we saw in the last post. The lower right corner of this triangle sits  at the northwest corner of Dundonald Park, where a gentle rise that began near Bank Street flattens off noticeably. The top corner, as we've already seen, sits at the junction of Bronson and Laurier Avenues. On the west... well, that cliff is hard to ignore. And as to the bottom left corner, things do start to drop away somewhat around Empress and Arthur — by the time you reach Somerset and Booth, it's all downhill with a vengeance.

Oh, and I think I figured out where that "Nanny Goat Hill" restaurant whatever thing used to be, back in the '70s — it looked bigger back then.

*For a list of significant Ottawa elevations, check out Wikipedia here.

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.

*     *     *

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.

*     *     *

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.

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