10 • February 6, 2014
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This street map of Ottawa published by the Tourism and Convention Bureau in 1963 shows where Banting Avenue used to be.
The street that time erased By Bob Grainger
This column is dedicated to the memory of a good friend, Grace (Waterman) Soubliere. For the first half of the 20th century, there was a small community of houses along the Ottawa River at the very end of Mansfield Avenue. The only approach to this community was to follow Mansfield Avenue north from Richmond Road, proceed over the Canadian Pacific Railway mainline and then down to a street that paralleled the river. This street was called Banting Avenue. Today there are absolutely no visible traces of this neighbourhood – there is no sign that this was the site of a community of houses containing occupants who chose this out-of-the-way corner of the city and who cherished the advantages of living there. Sadly, with the passage of time, there are fewer and fewer people who have memories of growing up in this location. The map above shows a section of the Ottawa River shoreline from just west of Woodroffe Avenue on the west to Westboro Beach on the east. In the middle of this piece of the shoreline, one can find Banting Avenue at the point where Mansfield Avenue intersects the river. (The map also mentions “Riverview Avenue,” but this name was used less often.) Richmond Road is a prominent east-west feature, as is Byron Avenue.
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The map was published by the Ottawa Tourist and Convention Bureau in 1963 at a critical point in the history of two railroads that ran through this area. The first of these is the Canadian Pacific mainline, which ran along the river between the shore and Richmond Road. Rail traffic along this line declined sharply in the 1960s, and by the end of the decade
terminated in 1959. The disappearance of Banting Avenue is a small chapter in a larger story – that of the creation of the Ottawa River Parkway (now called the Sir John A. MacDonald Parkway). And the story of the creation of the SJAM Parkway is a small chapter in the larger story of the re-configuration of the City of Ottawa, which started
This aerial photo from 1920 shows Richmond Road in the vicinity of Mansfield Avenue. Photo from the National Air Photo Library
the rails and ties had been removed. The other rail feature that is missing from this map is the Ottawa Electric Railway. The Britannia Line paralleled Richmond Road, just a few yards to the south. The OER was
with the meeting of Prime Minister Mackenzie King and renowned town planner Jacques Gréber at the World Exposition in Paris in 1937. King persuaded Gréber to come to Ottawa Continued on page 11