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OCTOBER 2026
ELECT
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Dear Neighbours, Over the past eight months, it’s been an enormous privilege — and a ton of fun — meeting thousands of you on your doorsteps, at events, markets and shops across Kitchissippi. I’ve loved our conversations. They’ve given me an even clearer sense of what I would bring to this job: listening carefully, asking questions, paying attention to the details and working flat out on the things that matter to us. Most of us want the same, unsurprising things. Far better transit. Smarter planning. Safer streets. New recreation facilities. More affordable housing. Improved services. Help for our most vulnerable residents. You’ve also told me you want a councillor who will be straight with you — someone who will explain what’s happening, acknowledge the trade-offs and tell you when something isn’t working. That comes naturally to me. I spent more than a decade covering City Hall as a journalist, breaking some big stories at the CBC and the Citizen. But what matters more is that I learned how our city really works. And doesn’t. Now I want to put that experience and energy to work for the community I’ve called home for 26 years. My husband and I raised our daughter here. I’ve watched Kitchissippi change, and over these past months I’ve come to know even more of the people and places that make it special. If I earn your vote this October, I’ll work every day to be a councillor who listens, speaks openly, asks tough questions – and fights hard for our community.
October 2026 • 2
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Until we meet,
ELECTION DAY IS OCTOBER 26 Make a plan to vote!
NEED A RIDE TO THE POLLS? email joanne@joannechianello.ca
There are 3 ways to cast your vote in person Special Advance Voting Days are October 1st to October 4th Advance Voting Day is Friday, October 16th Voting Day is Monday, October 26th Visit elections.ottawa.ca/VotingLocation/VotingLocation to see where you can cast your ballot.
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KITCHISSIPPI TIMES leiper2026.ca
OCTOBER 2026
Remembering artist Angela McGowan Page 30 URBAN LIVING, LOCALLY TOLD
We Fight the CRA So You Don’t Have To 613-903-5988
Bookkeeping. Payroll. Peace of Mind.
kitchissippi.com
NEW CHAPTER HOMES Page 35
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+ 8 PAGES OF LOCAL ELECTION COVERAGE
PHOTO BY SIMON MCKEOWN
Former Kitchissippi principal Isabelle Bourdeau has traded school newsletters for love stories with a new series of Ottawa-set romantic comedies. Page 32
3 • October 2026
KITCHISSIPPI TIMES
EDITOR’S NOTE
Great River Media Inc PO Box 91585 Ottawa ON K1W 1K0 The Kitchissippi Times is an award-winning newspaper that has serviced Westboro, Wellington West, and surrounding communities for the last 20 years. The word Kitchissippi, meaning “great river” in Algonquin, is the former Indigenous name for the Ottawa River.
Finding beauty in fall BY CHARLIE SENACK
Is there any time more beautiful than the fall? The skies turn bright shades of blue, and for a few short weeks, the city’s landscape is transformed by brilliant reds, oranges and yellows. Fall colours surround the walking trails in Gatineau Park, leaves crunch underfoot along neighbourhood sidewalks, and pumpkins and colourful displays begin appearing outside local businesses along Wellington Street West and Richmond Road. This fall, though, there is something else in the air—a city municipal election. On Oct. 26, Ottawa residents will head to the polls to elect a mayor, city councillors and school board trustees for the next four years. In Kitchissippi, voters are guaranteed to have a new
representative at the council table, with incumbent Coun. Jeff Leiper is giving up the seat he has held for 12 years to run for mayor. With so much at stake, we wanted this issue of the Kitchissippi Times to help you make sense of the choices on the ballot. So we’ve ramped up our municipal election coverage more than we ever have before. Inside, you’ll find in-depth coverage of the mayoral race, with the four main candidates making their pitch directly to urban residents. We also take a deep dive into the race for Kitchissippi Ward, examining where the candidates stand on some of the biggest issues facing the community, from transit and intensification to infrastructure, public safety and paid parking.
And if you want to read even more municipal election coverage, Kitchissippi.com continues to be your one-stop shop to find profiles of the candidates running in neighbouring Bay and Somerset wards, along with coverage of the local school board trustee races. This October, I hope you take time to enjoy the bright colours, go for a walk in nature, stop in to support a local business — and, of course, vote. You can help shape the direction your city takes over the next four years. Happy fall! If you support our work, please consider donating through the QR code or on Kitchissippi.com While our news is free to read, it is not free to produce.
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LET’S CELEBRATE LOCAL Get ready to raise a glass and toast to all things local at the Kitchissippi Times celebration! Tuesday, Oct. 20th • 4:00-7:00 pm
October 2026 • 4
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STORY IDEA? editor@kitchissippi.com twitter.com/kitchissippi EDITOR Charlie Senack charlie@kitchissippi.com twitter.com/charlie_senack CONTRIBUTORS Zoe Pierce, Brian Dryden, Nicholas Carchidi, Anita Murray, Ellen Bond, and Simon McKeown. ADVERTISING SALES Jennifer Tackaberry 613-696-9482 jennifer@kitchissippi.com CREATIVE DIRECTOR Tanya Connolly-Holmes creative@greatriver.ca GRAPHIC DESIGNERS Celine Paquette celine@greatriver.ca CHIEF OPERATING OFFICER Cheryl Schunk, 613-696-9490 cheryl@greatriver.ca All other enquiries 613-696-9494 info@kitchissippi.com DISTRIBUTION A minimum of 16,000 copies are distributed throughout the Kitchissippi area, from the Ottawa River to Carling Avenue, spanning the Britannia and Preston Street communities. Most residents in this area receive the Kitchissippi Times delivered directly to their door. Copies are also available at the Dovercourt Recreation Centre, Hintonburg Community Centre, Produce Depot and dozens of other convenient pickup locations. If you would like to become a distribution point, please contact us. DISTRIBUTOR Comet 2000 info@kitchissippi.com The Kitchissippi Times is published by
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5 • October 2026
MUNICIPAL ELECTION 2026
October 2026 • 6
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leading mayoral candidates make their pitch to Kitchissippi voters Ottawa voters will head to the polls on Monday, Oct. 26, to choose who will lead the city for the next four years. Fourteen candidates are on the ballot for mayor: Mark Sutcliffe, Jeff Leiper, Alex Lawson, Neil Saravanamuttoo, Zed Chebib, Peter Westaway, Suraj Harish, Queen Divine Priya Amber Bakshi, Bernard Couchman, Ali Shayvard, Jacob Solomon, Amjad Ali Syed, Josh Rachlis and Geoff Nicholas. Ahead of Voting Day, the Kitchissippi Times sat down with Sutcliffe, Leiper, Lawson and Saravanamuttoo — the four leading candidates — to learn more about their platforms and the proposals that could have the greatest impact on Kitchissippi residents.
Mark Sutcliffe seeks second term with promises to lower transit fares, hold down taxes BY CHARLIE SENACK
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our years after winning the mayor’s race as a political newcomer, Mark Sutcliffe is asking Ottawa voters to give him a second term. Sutcliffe was elected mayor in 2022 after campaigning on affordability, fiscal restraint and improving basic city services. Heading into the 2026 election, those themes remain, alongside new commitments including cheaper transit fares, more buses and police officers, infrastructure spending and a target to end youth homelessness. Sutcliffe has made lowering OC Transpo fares a major part of his reelection campaign, promising to reduce an adult monthly pass from $138.50 to $95 — a savings of more than $500 a year for someone who buys a pass every month. His proposal would also introduce a $10 daily fare cap and a two-hour transfer window. Free transit for youth would become permanent during the summer and on evenings and weekends, while
Para Transpo fares would be reduced. He is also proposing a bulk transit-pass program for major employers, including the federal government. The plan calls for another 200 buses by 2030, 250 additional drivers and mechanics, and the return of several suburban express routes. For Kitchissippi, another proposal would see a continuous bus lane along Carling Avenue between Lincoln Fields Station and Sherwood Drive, part of more than $1.3 billion in bus rapid transit and continuous bus-lane projects. Much of the plan is tied to the proposed transfer of Ottawa’s LRT infrastructure to the Ontario government. Sutcliffe has characterized the agreement as a roughly $4-billion provincial investment, with financial capacity created by the arrangement reinvested into OC Transpo. His campaign also argues that lower fares would attract more riders, offsetting some of the cost through increased fare revenue. Keeping property taxes low was central
Incumbent Mayor Mark Sutcliffe is seeking a second term. PHOTO BY KEITO NEWMAN.
to Sutcliffe’s first campaign. The citywide increase was 2.5 per cent in 2023 and 2024, meeting his initial commitment to keep increases between two and 2.5 per cent. It rose to about 3.9 per cent for an urban homeowner in 2025, while the 2026 budget included an overall 3.75-per-cent increase. Sutcliffe is promising to limit increases to between two and 2.5 per cent in each of the first two years of a second term. He is also pledging another $250 million in savings over four years, including through a hiring freeze for some non-frontline positions and further reviews of city spending. Sutcliffe said Kitchissippi homeowners could eventually face another affordability pressure when Ontario resumes property reassessments, which have been postponed since the pandemic.
“When those property reassessments happen, there are many residents in Ottawa, even if we froze taxes, their taxes would go up because of the increased value of their assessments. So any property tax increases are on top of some of the reassessments that are going to take place,” he said. Public safety is another area where Sutcliffe is promising new spending. His campaign has pledged to hire 200 additional police officers, 100 paramedics, and 50 firefighters, while expanding community policing and measures to improve safety on transit and in public spaces. Sutcliffe said his approach would combine enforcement with more treatment and mental-health services. “We need to take a balanced approach where we’re investing in public safety solutions, but we are also investing in caring for the vulnerable people who have unfortunately suffered through the toxic drug crisis or have experienced mental illness,” Sutcliffe said. He also wants to expand further ANCHOR, Ottawa’s alternative crisis response program, which sends civilian crisis workers to some calls rather than police. Sutcliffe has pledged to end youth homelessness in Ottawa by 2030 and is proposing thousands of additional affordable, supportive and transitional homes.
Housing presents a different challenge in Kitchissippi, where intensification has reshaped portions of Richmond Road, Scott Street and Wellington Street West. Sutcliffe said Ottawa needs significantly more housing to accommodate population growth, but believes much of it should be concentrated around rapid transit and major corridors. “We have to build around public transit and around major routes without upsetting the character of local neighbourhoods,” he said. “And I know Kichissippi has carried a lot of the weight of intensification over the last few years.” His housing platform calls for approvals for tens of thousands of additional homes by 2030 and greater use of publicly owned land. Infrastructure has also taken on greater urgency following severe flooding that affected thousands of properties in Ottawa this year, including in Bay Ward. Sutcliffe’s campaign is proposing hundreds of millions of dollars in infrastructure investments to withstand better severe weather, including storm sewer and drainage work. “We need to look neighbourhood by neighbourhood at what caused the flooding,” Sutcliffe said. “And I’ve committed that whatever infrastructure improvements we need to make to protect residents from flooding in the future, we will make those investments.”
BY CHARLIE SENACK
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7 • October 2026
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or the first time in more than a decade, Jeff Leiper won’t be asking Kitchissippi residents to send him back to the council seat he has held since 2014. Instead, he is asking them to help send him to the mayor’s office. As Leiper campaigns across Ottawa, the issues he is hearing about in Kitchissippi remain familiar: unreliable
buses, concerns over development and tree loss, rising housing costs and growing unease over public drug use and social disorder. “We continue to hear a lot about transit,” Leiper said of canvassing in the ward. “We hear a lot about green space and trees in Kitchissippi, so intensification has had the result of significant tree loss and tree canopy.” Continues on page 8
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Jeff Leiper takes Kitchissippi record into mayoral race
Building a healthy, active and engaged community through recreation
MUNICIPAL ELECTION 2026
October 2026 • 8
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Jeff Leiper cont'd His platform calls for reversing recent OC Transpo service reductions and introducing a “Transit Service Guarantee” with publicly reported standards for reliability and frequency. He has also committed to advancing bus rapid transit projects, including the longplanned Baseline Road corridor. Leiper said service remains a particular frustration in the western portions of Kitchissippi. “We have in Hintonburg, where I live, the city’s best transit, but you just move forward to Westboro, we lost one of our best routes,” he said. “The frequency of the 11 has been diminished. The 14 continues to be cancelled morning after morning.” Public safety and social disorder are also emerging as significant issues, Leiper said. “I heard from a resident recently in Hintonburg who is afraid to walk her daughter to school at Devonshire because of the public drug use and the social disorder that she’s seen on the street,” he said. “Very few people are comfortable with it. It diminishes their feeling of security in their neighbourhood. It has to be addressed.” Leiper said supportive housing and health care are ultimately needed to address homelessness and addiction, but acknowledged those solutions will take time. In the interim, he wants the city to increase its presence on the street. “More people picking up needles, more ambassadors on the street, more outreach workers,” he said. “These are all, in the context of our $5.2 billion budget, eminently achievable.” His platform calls for permanent funding and expansion of ANCHOR, which dispatches civilian teams to certain mental health and substance use calls. Leiper said policing would remain part of the response, but expanding alternatives could free officers to focus on issues such as aggressive driving, speeding and traffic enforcement. Development has been a defining issue during Leiper’s time representing Kitchissippi. As mayor, Leiper said
he would support development that conforms with Ottawa’s Official Plan. “We have the right Official Plan, and the Official Plan says that near transit stations, particularly, we’re going to have big, tall towers,” he said. “And then our main streets are going to develop as mid-rises with mixed development, and then the interior of our neighbourhoods is going to remain as low-rise.” One problem, Leiper said, is that Ottawa’s planning documents have not always kept pace with one another. Provincial policies can change, and the city can update its Official Plan while neighbourhood secondary plans remain based on older assumptions. Leiper wants the next council to bring those documents into better alignment and give residents a clearer
understanding of what can be built. His housing platform also calls for 1,500 new non-profit homes annually, with funding from other levels of government, and an acquisition fund that would allow nonprofit housing providers to purchase existing rental buildings and preserve their affordability. Leaving Kitchissippi politics for a citywide race has required Leiper to campaign in communities much different from the ward he has represented since 2014. He said concerns over transit, affordability and municipal services have followed him across ward boundaries. “It is surprising and gratifying to me when I go to the doors talking to people about transit and the need to invest in our services that I get roughly the same response, whether I am in Blackburn Hamlet or in Alta Vista,” he said.
Kitchissippi Coun. Jeff Leiper is running for mayor after three terms representing the ward. PHOTO BY CHARLIE SENACK.
Alex Lawson says city hall needs to focus on getting the basics right BY BRIAN DRYDEN
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ttawa mayoral candidate Alex Lawson says that if elected, his focus at city hall would be straightforward: ensuring the city provides the services residents expect and need. “We have to make sure that we are doing what is expected and needed by the residents of the city,” Lawson said. Under the slogan “get the basics right,” Lawson’s platform has focused on municipal services ranging from transit and roads to housing, public safety and how city hall spends taxpayers’ money. Lawson is the director of operations at Capital Framers, an Ottawa home-building company, and a father of three. He says his experience as a small-business owner and parent has given him a firsthand understanding of the challenges facing families and businesses. For Lawson, one of the city’s most
important responsibilities is maintaining the infrastructure residents rely on every day. “Maintaining the infrastructure, such as roads and sewers, so we don’t have the major flooding issues as we had around Canada Day,” he said. He also believes city hall needs to be careful about how it spends taxpayers’ money. “The city doesn’t need vanity projects, like Lansdowne 2.0,” Lawson said. Lawson has proposed a triage system for aging municipal buildings and community centres to assess their condition, determine what work is needed and identify costs before facilities fall into disrepair. His housing plan calls for a 90-day review of Ottawa’s shelter system involving police, paramedics and shelter operators. A shelter plan released Sept. 24 would establish one set of standards for every
shelter bed paid for by the city, including spaces in hotels and motels. Lawson proposes unannounced inspections at least four times a year, publicly available scorecards and an independent shelter ombudsman to receive complaints. Shelters would be required to report every assault, theft and police call to the city. Public scorecards would track police calls, needles collected, 311 complaints and bylaw calls in surrounding areas, while operators that repeatedly failed inspections could ultimately lose their city contracts. The plan would also require people entering shelters to receive a written plan for moving into permanent housing and a named caseworker within 30 days. For residents unable to live independently because of addiction or mental illness, his platform calls for supportive housing connected with treatment. Continues on page 10
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Thursday, October 22
MUNICIPAL ELECTION 2026
Homebuilder Alex Lawson says the city is currently heading in the wrong direction. FILE PHOTO.
BY CHARLIE SENACK
October 2026 • 10
kitchissippi.com
Alex Lawson cont'd On housing more broadly, Lawson has proposed cutting municipal development charges by 50 per cent for one year to encourage construction, particularly of two- and three-bedroom rental units. His campaign has set targets of roughly $1,800 per month for a new two-bedroom rental and $2,200 for a three-bedroom. If the private market did not produce enough family-sized rental housing after a year, his plan says the city would move toward developing housing using public land and financing partners. He has also pledged to repeal Ottawa’s vacant unit tax at the first meeting of the next council. Lawson argues the program has created an administrative burden without doing enough to improve affordability. His proposal would maintain the affordable-housing funding generated by the tax by finding savings elsewhere in the municipal budget. Public transit is another issue Lawson says needs attention. He believes OC Transpo needs to do a better job of helping people travel within their own communities rather than primarily focusing on routes that funnel passengers downtown. “If you want to go to a dentist appointment in Kanata, it shouldn’t be a multiple-hour journey,” he said. “You should be able to get around your community in a reasonable time frame. I believe more focus should be put on that
Neil Saravanamuttoo pitches $1 transit fares, public housing expansion in mayoral bid
idea than it seems is being placed now.” His transit platform proposes rebuilding schedules using operating data and driver input, reviewing dispatch and interlining practices and reconsidering routes where transfers have significantly increased travel times. He would expand OC Transpo-operated on-demand transit in rural Ottawa and put a senior manager directly in charge of Para Transpo performance. Lawson has also proposed temporary peak-hour express buses between major transit stations and downtown until the Confederation Line demonstrates 20 consecutive days of reliability at the standard his campaign says should have been met before the line opened. His plan calls for an independent review of OC Transpo management within his first 90 days. For drivers, Lawson has promised to remove paid on-street parking across Ottawa. He would switch off the city’s parking meters on his first day in office and eventually remove them, while establishing a minimum two-hour limit wherever time restrictions are needed. Transparency at city hall is another priority. Lawson has proposed a disclosure system for public contracts similar to Ontario’s Sunshine List. “That would allow everyone to know what is going on at city hall,” he said. “The more transparency, the better.”
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ttawa mayoral candidate Neil Saravanamuttoo says the city needs to think bigger when it comes to fixing transit, tackling homelessness and making housing more affordable — while giving neighbourhoods a greater say in how growth affects their communities. The economist and community advocate is making his first run for elected office. Saravanamuttoo grew up in Ottawa’s west end and later studied economics at Carleton University and the London School of Economics. His career included work at Finance Canada and as chief economist of the G20’s Global Infrastructure Hub. “We’ve got a crisis of affordability. We’ve got a crisis of livability essentially in this city too, and we’ve got a city hall that’s just not accountable to its residents,” he said. Transit is among the centrepieces of Saravanamuttoo’s campaign. He said a full network redesign would be developed with riders and operators rather than simply adjusting existing routes. “We are running a lot of legacy routes. We’re running a lot of routes that are just always empty, and we need to go back to square one on this and have a process with riders, with operators and with people that want to be riders,” he said. His campaign has suggested bringing back some express buses, reviving the former Route 95, adding more neighbourhood routes and concentrating service on high-demand corridors where riders could expect frequent buses without relying heavily on a schedule.
The most eye-catching piece is what Saravanamuttoo calls “Buck a Ride.” Conventional transit trips would cost $1, with riders paying no more than $40 in a month. “Because it caps out at $40 per month, like 40 rides, it means that it’s cheaper than all of the existing passes,” he said. “So we actually make passes redundant. We don’t need passes anymore.” Saravanamuttoo has said the plan would rely on anticipated savings if the province assumes responsibility for Ottawa’s LRT infrastructure, arguing those savings should be passed on to riders. On housing, Saravanamuttoo is proposing a significant expansion of publicly owned, non-market rentals aimed at low- and middle-income households. His campaign wants to expand Ottawa Community Housing’s ARRIV Properties model, which develops mixed-income housing on a costrecovery basis. Saravanamuttoo’s target is to increase non-market housing from about five per cent of Ottawa’s housing stock to 10 per cent, which his campaign estimates would require between 25,000 and 30,000 additional homes over as many as two decades. “What I’m proposing with my housing platform is we need to create a public option for mixed-income housing,” he said. “It is housing that is owned by the city, but is geared towards all income levels and is rented out at cost.” For people experiencing homelessness, Saravanamuttoo has pledged to bring a model similar to Village Transitiôn in Gatineau to
role in planning decisions. Infrastructure has particular resonance in Bay Ward following flooding that damaged homes this summer. Saravanamuttoo said Ottawa needs both upgrades to underground infrastructure and more nature-based stormwater management, including trees and areas designed to retain water during severe storms. He said the consequences were brought home during a conversation with a Crystal Beach resident whose basement flooded badly. The family lost belongings, including photographs, and now planned to keep many items out of the basement because they no longer trusted it would remain dry. Saravanamuttoo said the city should have been better prepared and noted that warning signs were already there. “What’s quite infuriating is that 10 years ago, the city had a study that said an area like Crystal Beach is at risk — at risk of extreme weather causing flooding. And so we knew about this a long time ago, and yet we chose to do nothing about it,” he said.
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Economist Neil Saravanamuttoo is pledging to cap transit fares at $1 a ride. PHOTO BY CHARLIE SENACK.
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Ottawa. The development uses converted shipping containers as transitional homes alongside services intended to help residents move into permanent housing. “We cannot hold out for the perfect solution,” Saravanamuttoo said. “We need to go with something good enough. And this is more than good enough.” For neighbourhoods experiencing the immediate effects of homelessness and the toxic drug crisis, his campaign is proposing same-day access to detox and recovery beds, rapid-response teams to clean up needles and biohazards, more mobile health clinics and additional daytime warming and cooling programs. Saravanamuttoo would also expand ANCHOR citywide. He previously served on the board of the Centretown Community Health Centre when the alternative crisis-response model was being developed. Rapid intensification has become another significant issue in Kitchissippi, where new towers and infill developments are adding residents to neighbourhoods with aging infrastructure. Saravanamuttoo said communities absorbing that growth should receive more direct benefits from it. “What I’m proposing as mayor is that the communities that are absorbing growth, a lot of the development revenues associated with that growth should stay in the community to fund the upgrades that the community needs, whether that’s hard assets, like sewers, or whether that’s parks or something else,” he said. His platform proposes earmarking revenues such as community benefit charges for improvements in the neighbourhoods where development occurs. It also calls for participatory budgeting, where residents would vote on some local capital projects, and regional planning panels intended to give councillors from affected areas a greater
MUNICIPAL ELECTION 2026
Paid parking, transit, and infrastructure:
Kitchissippi candidates weigh in on Ward's biggest issues BY CHARLIE SENACK
October 2026 • 12
kitchissippi.com
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From top to bottom: Brian Innes, Joanne Chianello and Subhir Uppal.
olourful election signs are once again lining streets across Ottawa as candidates make their pitch to voters ahead of the Oct. 26 municipal election. But in Kitchissippi, one thing is already certain: the ward will have a new councillor for the first time in more than a decade. Three-term Kitchissippi Coun. Jeff Leiper, who has represented the ward since 2014, is giving up his council seat to run for mayor, leaving behind an open race to replace him. Kitchissippi is one of the wards guaranteed to see a change at the council table. In Stittsville, Coun. Glen Gower is also leaving municipal politics. Meanwhile, two council races were decided before campaigning even began: Riley Brockington was acclaimed in River Ward and David Brown in Rideau-Jock after neither drew an opponent by the nomination deadline. They are the first Ottawa councillors to win by acclamation since 2003. Four candidates are vying to succeed Leiper in Ward 15: former municipal affairs journalist Joanne Chianello, former Hintonburg Community Association president Brian Innes, entrepreneur Subhir Uppal and Xavier Commerford. Michelle Groulx was in the race but withdrew her nomination. As of late 2025, Kitchissippi Ward was home to about 48,700 residents and 24,780 households. During the 2022 municipal election, voter turnout reached 52.98 per cent, with 15,693 ballots cast.
This election, candidates are campaigning on issues shaping life in Kitchissippi, including development, transit, aging infrastructure, and paid parking. The Kitchissippi Times asked each candidate how they would tackle these issues and what they would prioritize if elected. The Kitchissippi Times was unable to reach Commerford before the deadline. PAID PARKING Few municipal decisions have generated as much debate in Kitchissippi over the past year as the introduction of paid parking along portions of Richmond Road and Wellington Street West. The changes took effect in September 2025 following years of study into parking pressures in Westboro and Wellington West. The City said data collected during its Kitchissippi Parking Study showed consistently high demand, particularly during daytime hours and on weekends. Paid parking was introduced to increase turnover and make it easier for drivers to find spaces in busy commercial areas. But the rollout has remained contentious among some residents and businesses, with concerns ranging from inconsistent hours and confusing signage to the impact on neighbouring residential streets. Joanne Chianello said she does not expect paid parking to disappear altogether, but would work to make the system more consistent. Among her concerns are differing paid parking hours along portions of the same commercial corridor. She said she would push for uniform
hours and clearer information in the City’s parking applications. Chianello is also proposing 15 minutes of free parking for people making quick stops at businesses. “For places like the Bagelshop, you want to run in to pick up a dozen bagels, or restaurants that really count on takeout,” she said. “It’s just a little bit of goodwill to the residents, so you don’t feel like the city’s nickel-and-diming you every three seconds.” Chianello said she has checked with City staff and believes a free 15-minute period would be technically possible. Brian Innes is calling for a review of the program now that it has been operating for roughly a year. “What I hear often from residents is frustration about people blocking their driveways, about lack of clarity on the system and how to use it,” he said. “And yes, people would prefer to park for free.” Subhir Uppal has taken the strongest position against implementing paid parking. “I don’t support paid parking the way it was executed,” Uppal said. “I think it wasn’t done with the proper consultation, considering the businesses, the employees and the residents that were impacted by it.” Asked directly whether he would eliminate paid parking, Uppal initially said the current system should be stopped while alternatives are considered. “In the short term, yes, I think we need to stop paid parking and look at other ways we can generate more efficiencies for the city so we get a better deal here for our community,” he said. Pressed on whether paid parking could
eventually return, Uppal left the door open. “Possibly,” he said, adding the issue could be reconsidered once the western LRT extension is operating. “Long term, we will see.” TRANSIT OC Transpo has continued to grapple with bus reliability and ridership, which have yet to return to pre-pandemic levels fully. Its redesigned New Ways to Bus network also changed routes across Ottawa, with the City acknowledging that some riders now have farther walks or additional transfers. The cost of riding has also increased. The adult single-ride fare rose to $4.10 in January 2026, while a regular adult monthly pass increased to $138.50. For Chianello, frequency is as important as whether a bus arrives when scheduled. She said she has heard from residents who want to use transit but cannot trust connections enough to build their daily schedules around it. One woman, Chianello said, told her she eventually purchased a car because an unreliable connection home left her late picking up her daughter. She also believes the New Ways to Bus network needs another look as travel patterns and
the transit system change. “The city doesn’t work if transit doesn’t work,” she said. “We have a big intensification plan; we need transit. Environmental issues, we need transit. Everything needs transit.” Innes said his priority would similarly be reliability — particularly addressing “ghost buses” that appear on schedules but never arrive. “I take transit. I’ve experienced the challenge and hear from residents that ghost buses really make transit unreliable because you’re not sure if the bus is going to show up to get you to your appointment, to school or to work,” he said. Innes proposed publicly posting weekly information about cancelled or missing trips on his councillor website. Uppal divided the problem into two categories: reliability and affordability. On reliability, he called for greater use of real-time ridership information to determine where buses are most needed. “There are technological tools of AI that can recognize where buses should be placed, where there’s more demand for buses,” he said. “And we can generate realtime data for this.” Uppal specifically pointed to routes 11 and 81 as services he believes could
benefit from additional capacity, provided that ridership data supports it. His larger proposal is a move toward distance-based fares rather than charging the same basic fare regardless of trip length. “You pay for how much transit you use,” Uppal said. “I think that would be very beneficial here for our community. It would increase ridership. It would increase faith and trust in our system.”
INFRASTRUCTURE AND RECREATION A 2025 City asset-management review found that Ottawa owns and manages more than $90 billion in infrastructure. While the City concluded there was no imminent threat to day-to-day service delivery, its recreation portfolio shows where longer-term pressures are developing. Continues on page 14
Meet the candidates in Somerset and Bay Wards
Robert Dekker: A policy analyst who works on Parliament Hill,
Dillon Anderson: A business administration graduate who is pursuing his CPA designation, Anderson has centred his campaign on accessibility, transit reliability and fiscal responsibility. Michael Tay: Tay has spent more than 17 years working in social and community services, including homelessness, mental health, youth and newcomer services. He currently manages a transitional housing program for newcomers and refugee claimants and has taught
future social service workers at Algonquin College. Nicholas Gollé: He has a computer engineering degree from Carleton University and has worked in information technology in the federal public service for eight years. BAY Ward 7 is home to 51,440 residents, according to the City of Ottawa’s year-end 2025 estimate. In 2022, 43.77 per cent of eligible voters cast a ballot. Incumbent Theresa Kavanagh was re-elected with 82.79 per cent of the vote. Theresa Kavanagh: The incumbent councillor was first
elected to city council in 2018 after previously serving eight years as an Ottawa-Carleton District School Board trustee. Before entering municipal politics, Kavanagh spent nearly 30 years working on Parliament Hill. Spencer Radford: Radford has diplomas in Police Foundations and Social Service Worker from Algonquin College and has worked in areas including bylaw services, public transit and security. Butch Moore: Unlike his opponents, Moore did not provide a campaign website or social media account with his nomination information.
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Ariel Troster: Before joining council, the longtime Centretown resident worked in the nonprofit and labour sectors as a communications, policy and campaign specialist, including at the Federation of Canadian Municipalities.
Dekker is a former president of both the Centretown Community Association and Daybreak Housing’s board of directors.
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SOMERSET Ward 14 is home to 50,650 residents, according to the City of Ottawa’s year-end 2025 estimate. In the 2022 municipal election, 45.24 per cent of eligible voters cast a ballot. Ariel Troster won the open council seat with 61.28 per cent of the vote.
MUNICIPAL ELECTION 2026
October 2026 • 14
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Kitchissippi candidates weigh in on Ward's biggest issues Continues from page 13 About 14 per cent of arena and ice-rink assets were rated in poor or very poor condition, while another 45 per cent were considered fair. The pressures are even greater for aquatic facilities, 35 per cent of which were rated poor or very poor. In Kitchissippi, much of the candidates’ attention has centred on Tom Brown Arena. The Bayview Road facility remains open and in use, and the City’s 2026 capital budget includes lifecycle work at the arena. But its location near Bayview Station and the rapidly developing LeBreton Flats area has also prompted questions about what the site should look like decades from now. Chianello said it’s “ridiculous” that there is only one arena to service an entire ward and only one pool. In the short term, she wants to explore smaller additions, including a refrigerated outdoor rink and expanded programming at existing facilities. Her longer-term vision would examine Bayview, Tom Brown Arena and surrounding lands together to determine whether a larger recreation complex could eventually be constructed, potentially including multiple recreational uses. Chianello also pointed to the redevelopment of Tunney’s Pasture as another opportunity to negotiate for public recreation space. The 49-hectare federal site is planned as a mixed-use community with housing, employment, public spaces, and community amenities. Innes similarly argued that the ward needs a long-term recreation plan for buildings like Tom Brown. He said the city should not wait until aging facilities are no longer usable before determining their replacements. Uppal is also calling for a major new recreation facility, pointing to Tunney’s Pasture and Bayview as possible locations.
Ottawa voters will head to the polls on Oct. 26. PHOTO BY CHARLIE SENACK.
He said registering for swimming lessons is currently “like the Hunger Games.” The entrepreneur wants the City to negotiate for usable community space in major developments, particularly when developers seek changes to existing planning rules. INTENSIFICATION AND GREENSPACE High-rise proposals have transformed portions of Scott Street, Richmond Road, Wellington Street West and the areas around rapid transit stations. At the same time, provincial housing policies and Ottawa’s Official Plan have directed substantially more growth into existing urban neighbourhoods. The debate was illustrated recently by the redevelopment of the Carleton Tavern block in Hintonburg. Council approved the Official Plan and zoning amendments in September for a 32-storey tower with 386 residential units, commercial space, a public plaza, and a reconstructed Carleton Tavern building. The proposal had been reduced from an earlier 38-storey, 465-unit plan, but residents continued to raise concerns
about height, traffic and parking. Development is also colliding with another challenge: Kitchissippi’s relatively limited tree canopy. Ottawa’s Official Plan calls for the City to pursue an urban forest canopy of 40 per cent and directs growth and intensification to maintain the urban forest and provide space for trees. Kitchissippi sat at about 25 per cent canopy coverage in the most recently reported ward-level figures, down from 27 per cent in 2017. Chianello said one of her frustrations with the planning system is how difficult its rules are for ordinary residents to understand. She said a councillor’s job should include determining exactly what planning rules allow on a site and explaining that to residents in plain language before a development moves too far through the process. “I sweat details,” Chianello said. “And so the first thing I would always do is look at any proposal to say, what is really allowed here? What does it actually say? And how do I explain that in plain language?”
But Chianello said accommodating more residents cannot simply mean approving housing. Transit, recreation, roads, sewers, parks and trees all need to keep pace. “I think people would feel a little bit better about intensification if they could see there’s a plan to make it work for all of us,” she said. “Intensification isn’t free. It needs investment.” She wants a ward-wide tree-planting strategy and greater investment in the public realm, including more trees, benches and gathering spaces along main streets. Innes has emphasized the councillor’s role in representing residents when controversial developments come before city hall. He rejected the idea that councillors should simply tell residents that Queen’s Park or developers dictate decisions. “We need, as councillors, to consider the interests of the city, but our first and most important role is to represent the interests of the people who voted and live in Kitchissippi,” Innes said. Uppal said the City should also take a harder look at the cumulative effects of development, including parking, traffic, unit sizes, trees and access to community amenities. Rather than spending municipal resources fighting every development at the Ontario Land Tribunal, Uppal said there may be cases where the City could negotiate for tangible neighbourhood benefits. “Is there something you can contribute to the community, like public space, community space, more park space instead, that we can say, look, it could be kind of a win-win scenario for both sides?” he said. “Yeah, we might have the higher tower go in, but they were going to get it anyway. But look, in exchange, we got community space, more investment in parks from this builder.”
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You have six opportunities to cast your ballot in person at a fully accessible voting place.
Special Advance Voting Days October 1 to 4
During Special Advance Voting Days, you can vote in person at any of the 10 voting places across the city. For Advance Voting Day and Voting Day, you can cast your ballot at your designated voting place. Where do I vote? Starting September 1, use the “Where do I vote?” tool on ottawa.ca/vote to learn where and when you can vote.
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Who's running in my ward? Use the “Who is running in my ward?” tool on ottawa.ca/vote to verify your ward name, ward number and view the list of candidates running in your ward.
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Can't make it to the polls? You may apply for a special mail-in ballot from September 1 to 15 at 4:30 pm. You also have between September 1 and 4:30 pm on Voting Day to appoint a proxy to vote on your behalf.
October 16
Voting Day October 26
Visit ottawa.ca/vote for more information about these voting options. Questions? Elections Ottawa: 613-580-2660 | elections@ottawa.ca
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COMMUNITY
The Royal Ottawa has opened a new urgent care clinic, bringing walk-in care back to the hospital for the first time in more than two decades. President and CEO Cara Vaccarino said she was shocked to learn such a service didn’t exist when she took on the role. ALL PHOTOS BY RORY HALEY.
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Inside The Royal’s new approach to urgent mental health care After more than two decades without direct urgent psychiatric access, The Royal is opening a new door for people in crisis BY CHARLIE SENACK
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hen Cara Vaccarino arrived in Ottawa to take over as president and CEO of The Royal in early 2024, something about the city’s mental health system surprised her. For an institution dedicated to treating some of the region’s most complex cases of mental illness and addiction, there was no straightforward way for someone experiencing a crisis to walk through its
doors and ask for immediate help. “I was very, very surprised that there was no direct access to The Royal’s mostly inpatient services, which is a flow-through to outpatient care as well,” Vaccarino told KT. “Honestly, it’s not rocket science. It’s just common sense. When you have an organization that’s really difficult to access, you sort of unpack why, and basically, we had no direct admission route to The Royal.” Vaccarino and her team at The Royal set out to change that. More than two years
later, their work has resulted in a first-of-itskind service in eastern Ontario. On Sept. 18, staff, politicians, donors and community members gathered outside The Royal’s Carling Avenue campus to cut the ribbon on the Minto Greenberg Urgent Care Clinic. It opened its doors to patients three days later. The clinic allows adults experiencing an urgent mental health crisis to walk into The Royal without an appointment or referral and receive specialized psychiatric care.
RESORTING ACCESS WAS TAKEN AWAY DECADES AGO In some ways, the new urgent care clinic is going back to a model which worked in the past. During the late 1990s, the Ontario Health Services Restructuring Commission ordered significant changes to hospital care across the province. In Ottawa, that restructuring led to the creation of The Ottawa Hospital in 1998, bringing together several existing institutions and services. Psychiatric emergency services at the Royal Ottawa Hospital were transferred to the newly amalgamated Ottawa Hospital, and its emergency department shuttled in 2000. While it was supposed to improve efficiency, Vaccarino said the Royal became “isolated and cut off from being a really impactful partner in the health-care system in Ottawa.” The new urgent care clinic is not a recreation of that emergency department. Instead, it fills a space between scheduled mental health care and the traditional ER. It is intended for people whose psychiatric symptoms have become too serious to wait for their next appointment but who aren’t experiencing a life-threatening physical emergency. “We’re looking at — relative to other jurisdictions — very high emergency department wait times across the city of Ottawa, and the urgent care clinic at The Royal will be a really excellent way to help people divert from going to the emergency departments, which are really overburdened with unprecedented demand,” Vaccarino said. “It will also be a really good support for primary care practitioners across the area — family doctors who really manage a lot on their own, but when they need help with really complex, acute or confusing patients, they need access to specialized mental health assessment and treatment.” A study by researchers at The Ottawa Hospital and University of Ottawa
examined more than 170,000 visits to The Ottawa Hospital’s emergency departments between May 2022 and April 2024—about nine per cent ended with patients leaving before being seen by a physician. The study was not specific to psychiatric patients, but Vaccarino said people experiencing mental illness face particular challenges in busy emergency departments, where patients with urgent physical conditions are prioritized. “Those environments are really unsettling for people with serious anxiety or depression or substance use disorder or paranoia or some degree of psychosis,” she said. The Royal began a soft launch in April, initially accepting referrals from local emergency departments. By September, more than 200 individual patients had used the service, accounting for roughly 600 visits. Vaccarino said an analysis of those early patients found about 65 per cent were experiencing suicidal ideation or thoughts of hurting themselves. Stephanie Carter, executive director of clinical services at The Royal, said the early experience demonstrated the seriousness of the cases arriving at the clinic. “The people coming through our doors have often been experiencing severe symptoms and significant risk, including thoughts of suicide. This team has met each person with kindness and has provided exceptional clinical care,” Carter said. “We have carefully evaluated the impact of this early work, and the results are clear. Symptoms improve, risk decreases, and people leave with the support they need. I can say with confidence that this team has already saved lives.” The clinic now accepts walk-
ins, referrals from local emergency departments, transfers from the Ottawa Paramedic Service and drop-offs from Ottawa Police Service Mobile Crisis Response Teams. For first responders, Vaccarino said, that can mean spending less time waiting at a hospital with someone experiencing a psychiatric crisis. “Ottawa Police and Paramedics are super excited because they spend many hours just waiting with patients before they can offload them from ambulance or police carriers, and that ties up our emergency first responders unnecessarily across the region,” she said. “When they come to The Royal, they can just drop them off and wave goodbye, and we’ll take it from there.” HOW IT WORKS The Minto Greenberg Urgent Care Clinic is located at 1145 Carling Ave., with its own exterior entrance beside The Royal’s main doors. It currently operates Monday to Friday from 8 a.m. until 4 p.m. and is open to adults 18 and older. No referral is required. Patients are first assessed to ensure there is no physical health emergency requiring treatment elsewhere. Patients can then be seen by a multidisciplinary team that includes psychiatrists and other physicians, nurses, social workers, and peer support workers. Depending on the patient’s needs, care can include psychiatric assessment, crisis counselling, medication adjustments and assistance navigating other health services. People with alcohol- or opioid-related concerns can also be connected to The Royal’s Rapid Access Addiction Medicine Clinic for specialized addiction treatment. The urgent care clinic can generally
accommodate about 20 patients per day. There is no charge for patients with a valid Ontario health card. But the service doesn’t necessarily end after that first visit. If longer-term treatment is required, patients can be connected with specialized programs at The Royal or services elsewhere in the community. The goal is ultimately to stabilize patients and, where possible, return their ongoing care to family physicians and other community providers. Then, if a client's condition worsens again, the clinic remains another place to turn. “Mental illness is cyclical,” Vaccarino said. “You have good days, you have bad days, you can go months feeling really well, and then you hit a wall and need some help again. So we need to really accommodate our mental health ecosystem according to the nature of these illnesses.” The clinic was made possible in part through a $2.5-million donation from the Minto Greenberg Legacy Foundation. It is also among the initiatives supported by The Royal’s Lives Reclaimed campaign, which has a $75-million
fundraising goal to improve access to specialized mental health and addiction treatment and to advance care and research. The campaign launched with a $14-million gift from the Waverley House Foundation. Vaccarino hopes the clinic will soon be able to expand its services into evenings and weekends. She expects the increased care to happen soon. “Evenings and weekends are when other services are closed, and police and paramedics are really needing someplace that they can bring people for support,” she said. She acknowledged the financial pressures facing hospitals across Ontario, but said they cannot become a reason to stop changing how care is delivered. “What if we all just threw up our arms and said, ‘There’s no money, we can’t do it?’ Well, that’s not acceptable. And I don’t think it’s true,” Vaccarino said. “I think you can always do something better, and you should always try if you’re going to be in this line of work. That’s our calling. That’s our job.” With files by Rory Haley
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17 • October 2026
FOCUS SHOCKWAVE THERAPY
HISTORY
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Westboro’s long-lost bell
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Once used to summon firefighters and mark curfew, the historic bell has spent the past six decades in Nepean BY CHARLIE SENACK
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or more than half a century, the belfry atop the old Nepean Town Hall on Richmond Road has sat empty and silent. The stone building near Churchill Avenue remains a prominent piece of Westboro’s past, dating to a time when the neighbourhood was still part of Nepean Township. But the roughly 1,000-pound bell that once rang from its tower is nowhere to be found. At least not in Westboro. It now sits several kilometres away outside Ben Franklin Place in Centrepointe, where it remains a symbol of the former City
of Nepean. How it got there is a story that was kept hidden for decades. WHEN THE BELL MEANT THERE WAS A FIRE The old Nepean Town Hall was constructed at 345 Richmond Rd. in 1896, replacing an earlier town hall on Parkdale Avenue after Hintonburg separated from Nepean. Designed by prominent Ottawa architect Moses C. Edey, the building predates the Westboro name itself, which emerged three years later. The bell came 20 years after the town hall opened. Westboro established a volunteer fire brigade in 1913. By 1916, firefighters
needed a better way to alert volunteers to emergencies. Four members of the brigade appeared before the Westboro Village Council on Feb. 1 of that year, asking for a “motor chemical engine” and a bell atop the town hall. The request was forwarded to Nepean Township council and approved. Westboro council then went shopping. Stinson & Cummings hardware store on Richmond Road offered several options. Council minutes show that on April 4, councillors decided to purchase a bell weighing about 1,000 pounds, although surviving records do not reveal its price. Local contractor and insurance agent William J. Hamilton was paid $175 to build
and install the belfry. By early July 1916, Westboro had its alarm system. A long rope attached to the bell hung down the front of the building. It could be reached through a window when firefighters needed to be called. Determined pranksters could also reach it. In Early Days of Westboro Beach, Bob Grainger recounted how Sid Goldenberg and a few friends once managed to attach a wire to the rope and sound the alarm, bringing volunteer firefighters running to a fire that didn’t exist. The bell eventually became part of everyday life beyond emergencies. Beginning in 1937, it rang every night at 9 p.m., signalling a curfew for children under 16.
1. The former Nepean Town Hall when it still served as a municipal building. 2. The Nepean bell now sits outside Ben Franklin Place at Centrepointe. PHOTO BY CHARLIE SENACK.
3. The bell at Nepean’s town hall in Bells Corners shortly after it was removed from Westboro. 4. There have been efforts over the decades to return the bell to Westboro, but all have proven unsuccessful. PHOTO BY CHARLIE SENACK.
4 Ron Statham recalled the challenge that was created for young moviegoers who’d frequent the Westboro Theatre, where children could convince strangers to buy their 18-cent tickets and accompany them inside. “If it was after 9 p.m. when the show finished, you really, really ran like hell to get home and avoided Churchill Avenue so as not to run by the police station,” Statham previously recalled to KT. The bell nearly came down for good in March 1943, when a massive fire ripped through the town hall. Firefighters worked to save the belfry, partly out of fear that the
heavy bell would crash down on them. Both survived. After the Second World War, curfew restrictions were relaxed, and the bell largely fell silent. In 1950, Ottawa annexed 7,420 acres of Nepean Township, including Westboro and almost all of Nepean’s urbanized territory. The annexation produced an unusual result: Nepean’s town hall was now located inside Ottawa. For 16 years, Nepean continued governing from Richmond Road. But the township’s population was increasingly concentrated elsewhere, and in January 1963, council unanimously voted to build a new municipal headquarters in Bells Corners. ‘THIS BELL HAS TO BE PRESERVED’ What should have been a relatively small ordeal about what would become of the Nepean bell turned into a decades-long debate over territory. Some Westboro residents wanted it to remain where it had spent the previous decades. John Steacy, whose father, Col. R. H. Steacy, was rector at All Saints Church for 42 years, appeared before Nepean council in 1963 and asked for the bell to be donated to the neighbouring Anglican Church. “There are far too many historical buildings in Ottawa disappearing,” he said, according to an Oct. 11, 1963 Ottawa Citizen article. “The people of All Saints and Westboro have gone to a great deal of trouble to restore that church. We would like to preserve the bell as a live monument.” Council refused to sell it. In November 1964, during Ottawa mayor Charlotte Whitton’s push to preserve historic buildings, Ottawa bought the old Nepean Town Hall for $40,000 with plans to convert it into a seniors’ recreation centre. In the summer of 1966, after years of disagreement with Ottawa over who owned
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the bell, a Nepean crew arrived at the Richmond Road building after dark and removed it. Was it theft? Former Nepean reeve Aubrey Moodie certainly didn’t think so. He described it as a “way to recover money rightfully owed to Nepean.” Nepean’s new municipal building in Bells Corners officially opened that November, and there, the old bell rang again. Coun. J.K. Kerr pulled a cord from inside the new hall, ringing the bell that had been taken from Richmond Road and installed on a specially designed tripod outside. The three legs themselves were symbolic. Kerr told the crowd that the longest represented a father, the next longest a mother and the shortest a child — together representing the “family-like unity” council intended to maintain in Nepean. In 1980, that connection became official when the bell and tripod were incorporated into Nepean’s city flag and logo. When city hall moved again in 1988, the bell followed to Ben Franklin Place. It has been there ever since. WESTBORO WANTS IT BACK Since at least the 1970s, Westboro residents have discussed almost every imaginable way to get the bell back, including buying it, trading for it, launching legal action, or even stealing it themselves. The debate received renewed attention in 1998 when the Westboro Community Association began pushing to return a bell to the Richmond Road town hall as a millennium project.
In his Nov. 29 Citizen column, Gray reported that the association hoped to raise $68,000 for a computerized bell system, with contributions sought from companies, community groups, residents and potentially the province. Moodie was having none of the idea of returning the original. “As long as I’m alive, it’s not going anywhere,” he said. Nepean politicians were divided. ThenNepean councillor Linda Davis suggested the city could save money by returning the old bell. “Absolutely not,” responded fellow Nepean councillor Margaret Rywak. “It’s our symbol.” Then-mayor Mary Pitt and former mayor Ben Franklin had also fought to keep the bell in Nepean. Westboro ultimately didn’t get the bell back for the millennium. It did, however, get a temporary homecoming. In 2005, the bell was loaned to Westboro for the community’s 100th anniversary celebrations, though Nepean representatives kept a close watch on it. Former Barrhaven Coun. Jan Harder was particularly wary of letting it leave. “There is no way Nepean should expose its heart and soul by allowing it to be moved to Westboro for any length of time. The risks of never seeing that bell in Nepean again are just too great,” Harder said. Another attempt to return it around Canada’s 150th anniversary in 2017 was unsuccessful. With files by Dave Allston kitchissippi.com
19 • October 2026
COMMUNITY
Community Celebrates as Ukrainian Orthodox Church Unveils New Bells New bells are hanging at Ottawa’s Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Ukrainian Orthodox Cathedral.
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PHOTOS PROVIDED BY SIMON HOPKINS.
BY NICHOLAS CARCHIDI
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or the first time, the sound of 12 new church bells rang out over Byron Avenue, carrying traditional hymns and the Ukrainian national anthem beyond the walls of Ottawa’s Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Ukrainian Orthodox Cathedral. Parishioners gathered at the church on Sept. 13 to hear the bells for the first time, marking the completion of a project that began with a much smaller idea during the parish’s 75th anniversary
celebrations two years earlier. Fr. Taras Kinash, the parish priest, said a member of the congregation approached him at the time with the idea of bringing bells to the church. “The original idea was to order two or three bells, but we eventually realized that having 12 working bells would help create the melodic tunes we want the community to hear,” he said. The 12 bells were shipped from Italy and made possible through community sponsorships and donations. More than $45,000 was raised with help from organizations including Buduchrist Credit Union Financial Group, the Ukrainian Credit Union and anonymous donors from the congregation and broader community. Kinash said church bells carried significant meaning for Ukrainian Orthodox Christians. Beyond calling people to prayer, they hold a deep historical and spiritual significance within the Orthodox tradition. The bells themselves cost about $20,000, while the overall project — including shipping, installation, framing and equipment — totalled approximately $30,000. Following the Divine Liturgy on Sept. 13, parishioners gathered near the top of the building to see the new bells and hear them ring for the first time. At noon, their sound carried across Byron Avenue. “I felt blessed to finally hear them,” Kinash said. He watched alongside parishioners and community partners as the bells played traditional church hymns and the Ukrainian national anthem. An electronic ringing system controls the bells and can store as many as 40 songs, allowing the church to select different melodies for services, celebrations and other occasions.
“An achievement of this kind of significant project gives me great joy, and pure happiness. You wouldn’t be able to do anything without God’s will,” Kinash said. The congregation marked the occasion with food and musical performances from parish members. The bells are the latest in a series of projects undertaken at the Byron Avenue church in recent years. Kinash said more than $200,000 has been raised for renovations to the building, including a new roof, a revamped foyer, modernized washrooms and the installation of air conditioning. Located at 1000 Byron Ave., the parish traces its roots in Ottawa back 77 years. In 1949, Ottawa’s Ukrainian Orthodox community held its first service at a Greek Orthodox church on Albert Street. Six months later, the parish purchased a former Anglican church at Main Street and Colonel By Drive for $19,000, establishing the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin parish along with language schools and a women’s association. The church purchased land on Byron Avenue in 1962. Two years later, its ground-floor banquet hall opened and became a temporary place of worship for the next 12 years. The current sanctuary was designed by renowned Ukrainian-Canadian architect Yuri Kodak. Construction began in 1977, with the building officially opening its doors in 1978. Decades later, the church has become more than a place of worship for Ottawa’s Ukrainian community. Since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, the parish has also served as a centre for humanitarian assistance. The parish has continued sending humanitarian aid to people affected by the war, including food, clothing and medicine. It has also organized fundraisers to purchase supplies for Ukrainian hospitals and organizations working on the ground. The church has also raised money for meteorological equipment used by Ukrainian pilots to assist with transporting equipment to locations where it is needed. “From day one of the Russian invasion in Ukraine, our church became a hub for supporting local members and the nation of Ukraine,” Kinash said.
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October 2026 • 22
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aste of Wellington brought crowds to Wellington Street West for a day of food, shopping and community festivities. The annual event showcased businesses throughout Wellington West and Hintonburg, giving visitors a chance to sample food from local restaurants, browse neighbourhood shops and enjoy entertainment along the street. The celebration has become a popular way to highlight the people and businesses that make the area unique, while bringing neighbours and visitors together for one of Wellington West’s signature events. Kitchissippi Times photographers Ellen Bond and Charlie Senack were there to capture the sights, flavours and faces of this year’s Taste of Wellington.
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Hintonburg and Civic Hospital neighbourhoods report increase in public drug use, social disorder Left: A tent encampment and garbage near Bayview LRT Station. PHOTO BY CHARLIE SENACK.
BY CHARLIE SENACK
October 2026 • 26
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rom Bayview station, the beginnings of a tent encampment are visible among the trees and brush below. A blue tent sits about 200 feet from the LRT station along a well-worn dirt path following the route of the former rail line, while farther into the vegetation, piles of discarded clothing and garbage have accumulated. Drug paraphernalia was also found mixed into one of the piles. For Hintonburg Community Association security chair Cheryl Parrott, it’s a sign that activity is returning to an area that has previously seen encampments. “It started up again,” Parrott told KT. “I was just coming home on the LRT this morning, and I could see a tent that’s very visible from the station, which is fairly new. It wasn’t there the last time I took the LRT, which was maybe a week ago.” Earlier this year, an encampment in the same general area was abandoned before an extensive cleanup was undertaken. According to Somerset Ward Coun. Ariel Troster, crews removed “approximately nine tandem loads of material,” along with more than 26 propane and fuel tanks and close to 1,800 to 2,000 needles and other drug paraphernalia. Much of the underbrush was also cut back, and for a while, the area appeared relatively quiet. But as the vegetation has grown back, Parrott said tents have begun appearing again. “It’s very visible, but there’s some further in that is much more hidden,” she said. “But you can see them from the Trillium Pathway. They’re closer to the Kichi Zībī Mīkan.” A few blocks south, residents in the Civic Hospital neighbourhood have reported finding discarded needles,
Below: Security camera footage posted to a local Civic Hospital community group shows a parcel being stolen. Insert one: Cheryl Parrott is chair of the Hintonburg Community Associations security committee. FILE PHOTO BY HANNAH WANAMAKER.
Insert two: Karen Wright is president of the Civic Hospital Neighbourhood Association.
FILE PHOTO BY CHARLIE SENACK.
encountering people sleeping on porches or backyard furniture, having packages stolen and discovering vehicles that have been rifled through. Karen Wright, president of the Civic Hospital Neighbourhood Association, said some residents have brought their concerns directly to the association. “The awareness level is up, and perhaps it is more,” she told KT. “The issues that I’m hearing that are a little bit louder and a little bit different are this concern about
needles and homelessness. But in addition to those issues, porch pirates have been quite strong and very regular this year.” Wright said package theft has become particularly persistent, with some people travelling through the neighbourhood on foot or using bicycles and trailers. She has also seen reports of abandoned bicycles and vehicles being checked for unlocked doors.
Neither issue is completely new to the neighbourhood. Wright, who has lived in the area for about 30 years, remembers hearing concerns about discarded needles when she first moved in. Another longtime resident recently recalled that, roughly two decades ago, parents would check the sand beneath playground structures for needles. The neighbourhood association was already discussing many of those concerns before the summer. In the spring, it brought residents together with Ottawa police, representatives from ANCHOR, Ottawa Centre MPP Catherine McKenney and Kitchissippi Ward Coun. Jeff Leiper for a community meeting on safety and social disorder. Wright said one of the messages from that meeting was the importance of reporting incidents, even when they might appear relatively minor. Residents acknowledged they sometimes did not report suspicious activity if someone had already left or an incident had ended
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WHERE ARE THE PROBLEMS COMING FROM? Parrott said Hintonburg saw a particularly noticeable change beginning around midJuly, when more people began congregating along Wellington Street West. She said businesses experienced an increase in theft, while public drug use and disruptive — and occasionally aggressive — behaviour became more visible. “It was just an influx of people on Wellington Street, so very much affecting the businesses and people, you know, frequenting Wellington Street, but just an increase in drug use and also in sort of disruptive behaviour and sometimes aggressive behaviour,” she said. By late August, much of that activity appeared to have diminished, Parrott said, although she has recently noticed another smaller increase. She suspects that at least some of the people appearing in Hintonburg have come from farther east. Prescription bottles and other items have been found in the area, she said, while some residents have recognized people they had previously seen around Rideau Street and the ByWard Market. Wright believes that addressing visible problems in one area without addressing the underlying causes risks simply shifting the issues elsewhere. “I think there is a certain pressure to get the homeless, people with issues, drug issues, etc., out of the ByWard Market, because we’re trying to revitalize the area, for the businesses and tourism there, which is all good,” Wright said. “But, it’s simply moving people from one area to another. So it doesn’t solve the problem.”
is responding to the addiction and homelessness crisis. Over the last 18 months, Ottawa has lost its supervised consumption sites as the provincial government moved away from that model and expanded Homelessness and Addiction Recovery Treatment, or HART, Hubs. The supervised consumption service at Somerset West Community Health Centre in Chinatown closed March 31, 2025, after the province prohibited consumption and treatment sites from operating within 200 metres of schools and child-care centres. Somerset West transitioned into a HART Hub the following day. HART Hubs are intended to bring addiction treatment together with mental-health care, primary care, housing assistance and other social supports. They do not permit supervised drug consumption. Ottawa Public Health’s supervised consumption service subsequently closed in October 2025. Then, earlier this year, provincial funding was withdrawn from Ottawa’s remaining consumption and treatment services, leading to the closure of sites operated by Ottawa Inner City Health and the Sandy Hill Community Health Centre. The province has promoted the HART Hub model as an approach centred on treatment and recovery. McKenney, whose Ottawa Centre riding includes Chinatown, Hintonburg and the Civic Hospital neighbourhood, has been a vocal critic of the shift. “It has been very disappointing to see the regression,” McKenney said. “Today, we have open drug use in a way that we’ve not seen before. It is not abating. If anything, it’s getting worse.” McKenney argues that housing must be another central component of any response. They said financial hardship, unaffordable rents, job losses, relationship breakdowns and domestic violence can push people out of housing. At the same time, prolonged stays in shelters or on the streets can compound existing mentalhealth and addiction issues. “The consumption site not only gave people who use drugs a safe place to do so, but also allowed us to connect with people, to understand where they’re at, what their needs are, how we can house them, how we can get them connected into healthcare services, including treatment,” said McKenney.
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without further escalation. The association has also encouraged residents to take relatively simple precautions, including locking doors, keeping packages out of sight or having deliveries sent elsewhere when possible. In Hintonburg, the community association has taken a similar approach. Parrott said it developed a “who to call” resource to help residents determine whether an incident should be reported to police, ANCHOR or another service.
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ARTS
One last show for Hintonburg artist Angela McGowan BY ZOE PIERCE
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I
f you’ve lived in Hintonburg, you’ve likely come across the work of Angela McGowan. The artist, who died in June, spent decades leaving her mark on Ottawa’s arts community through murals, public art and paintings. And at the Hintonburg Public House, McGowan’s presence is impossible to miss.
Her paintings cover the walls of the Wellington Street West restaurant and bar, where she held several exhibitions over the years and became a staple of the neighbourhood’s arts community. The current exhibition is her final one. After McGowan’s death, her daughters, Mandala Moynahan and Meghan Gaines, were left with a large collection of her artwork and weren’t sure what to do with it. But with help from Hintonburg Public
Above: Angela McGowan is being remembered for the mark she left on Ottawa’s arts community. PROVIDED PHOTO. Left and right: Some of McGowan’s artwork on display at the Hintonburg Public House. PHOTOS BY ZOE PIERCE.
House owner Summer Baird and her partner, Daniel, they decided to bring some of it back to a place that had been important to their mother. “It would be sad to see it just sit in someone’s basement,” Baird said. “So I was really excited at the idea of having her stuff in my space one more time, just as like a last hurrah.” McGowan’s artistic roots in the Ottawa area stretched back decades. Newspaper
archives show her exhibiting work in the region as early as the 1980s. A 1988 profile described the Ottawa-born artist as having lived in Toronto, Montreal and Calgary before settling with her family in a log cabin in Matilda Township, south of Ottawa. At the time, she worked in pencil, pastels, watercolours and oils and spoke about not wanting to be confined to one artistic niche. McGowan moved back to Ottawa
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in 1989 after living in the country. Her daughters remember a career that took her into a wide range of artistic projects, including work for the National Arts Centre and the Museum of Nature, as well as creating murals and other public art. “She was a lot in a little package,” Moynahan said. “She was really like a pioneer artist.”
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McGowan went through several different artistic phases, her daughters said, beginning with landscapes and still lifes before moving into abstract work and later paintings inspired by Catholic imagery. “She liked to push boundaries,” Moynahan said of the Catholic Church paintings. “She was pretty open-minded. I think the church imposes like so many rules that a lot of people are like, ‘these are the rules,’ and she’s like, there are no rules.” McGowan did not explain the meaning behind her work to her daughters. “She expressed a lot through art, but she would never actually tell you the story of any art either,” Moynahan said. “No, it was all in the eye of the beholder, right?” Although McGowan’s work could take on different styles, Baird said there was always something recognizable about it. “Her work, she had multiple styles, but you could always tell it was an Angela McGowan,” said Baird. Baird first met McGowan through other artists and eventually hosted four or five of her shows at the restaurant. McGowan was also part of an annual fundraising art show supporting the Parkdale Food Centre,
a Hintonburg organization that provides groceries, meals and other community supports. Her involvement in Hintonburg’s arts scene extended beyond the walls of the Public House. As recently as 2025, McGowan was among the artists participating in the Hintonburg Community Association’s annual ArtsPark festival at Parkdale Park, where she took part in live painting and the festival’s art competition. “She was a super talented artist, feisty woman, didn’t take bullshit from anyone,” Baird said. “If you needed something, she would be there for you.” McGowan’s paintings also gave people something to talk about. “There’s just a lot of conversations around the artwork and the Catholic Church and the good things and the bad things, mostly the bad things, unfortunately,” Baird said. But not every piece was meant to provoke. “And then they were also whimsical, like they make you smile or make you think,” Baird said. “It makes you feel like, community.” That connection to community is also reflected in what will happen to the
proceeds from McGowan’s final exhibition. Fifty per cent of all artwork sales will be donated to the Parkdale Food Centre, while the other half will go to McGowan’s family and estate. “She’s an artist, so I mean, she had to use the food bank at home too,” Moynahan said. “It’s a really nice community organization.” McGowan was known for giving to people around her, her daughters said. “She loved people,” Gaines said. “She loved being around people and giving.” Gaines said they didn’t realize how widely known McGowan was while she was alive. “It’s pretty cool, actually. You know she’s kind of famous. I didn’t realize just how famous she was until she passed away,” Gaines said. Her mother had joked about that herself. “But she always said, ‘My art will be worth more once I’m dead,’” Gaines laughed. McGowan’s final collection went on display at Hintonburg Public House on Sept. 9, with friends, family and members of the community gathering the following evening to celebrate her life and work. The exhibition will remain on the walls until Nov. 2.
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READS
Isabelle Boudreau — once known as Isabelle Flannigan — wrote a series of romance novels after retiring as a school principal.
October 2026 • 32
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PHOTOS BY SIMON MCKEOWN.
Former Kitchissippi principal starts a new chapter as rom-com author BY CHARLIE SENACK
F
or more than three decades, Isabelle Bourdeau’s writing assignments included report cards, staff memos and newsletters home to parents. But after she retired from a long career in education — including six years as a principal at Elmdale and Fisher Park/Summit public schools — she decided to turn her focus to romantic comedy. “When I retired in 2024, I knew that I
wanted to keep doing something, but I wasn’t really sure what it was going to be,” Bourdeau said. “And one day I read a rom-com, and at the end of it, I thought, you know, I think I could write one of these things.” So she did. “I thought, why don’t I give it a try? And I did, and I loved it,” she explained. “It was just so much fun, and it was just kind of using a different part of my brain.” The result was One List at a Time, the first instalment in Bourdeau’s Crushes on
the Rideau series, released in July. The contemporary romantic comedy follows Jake, a 27-year-old teacher returning to Ottawa with a journal full of lists and goals for creating his perfect life. He meets fellow teacher Natalka and the two discover they have something in common: they both want to buy a home, and neither can afford one alone.
Their solution is to pool their money and purchase a fixer-upper together. It would have all worked out if it weren’t for one complication. “Jake has a raging crush on Natalka,” Bourdeau said. The Ottawa setting was intentional, as was Bourdeau’s decision to centre the story around teachers. After all, she was following a familiar piece of writing advice. Bourdeau had plenty of material to draw from. She began her career as a French immersion elementary teacher in Toronto, where she worked for seven years before returning to Ottawa, a city where she had previously studied. She later joined the Ottawa-Carleton District School Board, becoming a vice-principal and eventually spending the final 11 years of her career as a principal. Kitchissippi families may remember her by a different name. Bourdeau, formerly Isabelle Flannigan, served as principal at Elmdale Public School from 2018 until 2022 before moving to Fisher Park/Summit, where she worked until her retirement in 2024. Writing fiction was not a longstanding career ambition. Bourdeau wrote occasionally when she was younger and kept journals, but nothing was intended for a wider audience. Her education career, however, provided plenty of practice putting words on a page. “I had to write a lot of parent newsletters and staff memos,” she said. “And I often got comments from other people that they thought were really funny.” There was another unexpected twist in becoming an author: Bourdeau is a francophone from Montreal who learned English at 12. While principal at Fisher Park, she would sometimes share that experience with students who were learning English themselves. Now, she is writing novels in her second language.
After finishing One List at a Time, Bourdeau found herself reluctant to leave its characters behind. “When I finished the first book, I felt a little bit sad,” she said. “You know, when you read a book and you really attach to the characters and the story and you kind of don’t want it to end.” But as the author, Bourdeau realized it didn’t have to. One Sketch at a Time, expected to be released at the end of November, follows Sophie, one of the teachers from the first book, who meets a man while the two are trapped in an elevator. They connect during their time together but lose track of one another after getting out, setting off a search to reunite. A third instalment, One Step at a Time, has already been drafted and is expected to be released in spring 2027. It will focus on Jake’s best friend, who finds himself in trouble with the law. Bourdeau already has ideas for what could come next, though she doesn’t expect to continue the Crushes on the Rideau series. “I’m in my 50s. I’m thinking I might do something with characters in their 50s,”
she said. “I don’t even know if it would be a romantic comedy yet. So I’m letting that sort of brew in the background as I finish these three.” For Bourdeau, retirement was supposed to be a chance to slow down. But with three books written and more ideas already taking shape, she has kept busy. The transition from education to writing also took some getting used to. After spending decades working with students, Bourdeau initially questioned what writing romantic comedies could offer others. “I struggled a little bit with the genre when I started writing, because in my career, I always had a job where I impacted kids and I felt like I contributed,” she said. “And with this, I was thinking, well, am I contributing? How am I contributing?” Eventually, Bourdeau found her answer. “There is so much conflict and chaos in the world right now,” she said. “I think we need to escape to these, you know, lands of opportunity or lands of laughter and, you know, possibility.”
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Trust the people who report on your community. Celebrate local journalism.
OTTAWA’S FESTIVAL OF IDEAS
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Al Gorithm decides what you see online based on your clicks, likes and shares. His job is to keep you scrolling. But would you trust him to tell you what’s happening in your community?
T H E OT TAWA I N T E R NAT I O NAL
BUSINESS
Little Italy’s historic Prescott up for sale BY CHARLIE SENACK
O
October 2026 • 34
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ne of Little Italy’s best-known watering holes is looking for a new operator after more than 90 years on Preston Street. The Prescott, a neighbourhood institution known for its meatball sandwiches, quarts of beer and generations of loyal regulars, has been put up for sale. The business at 379 Preston St. is currently listed for $499,000 — a $300,000 reduction from its original asking price. Real estate records show the Prescott was first listed for $799,000 on May 20 before the price was reduced. The sale is for the business — not the historic building itself. The approximately 10,000-squarefoot operation includes the Prescott and its rooftop patio, the Porch on Preston. The establishment is licensed for 600 people, including the patio, and has a full commercial kitchen, walk-in refrigeration and multiple spaces capable of hosting events and entertainment. “The legendary Prescott is available in the heart of Little Italy in Ottawa,” reads the listing from Carve Real Estate, which describes the
The Prescott has been a staple in the Little Italy neighbourhood for decades. PHOTO BY CHARLIE SENACK.
establishment as one of the city’s best-known sports bars and entertainment destinations. “The business is available with training or can be converted into a different concept, cuisine, franchise, or entertainment venue,” the listing states. Monthly gross rent, including TMI, is listed at $34,100, with what the listing
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describes as significant time remaining on the lease. The Prescott’s size is also part of its selling pitch. The business has multiple service areas and a large commercial kitchen designed for high-volume food and beverage operations. Its rooftop patio has in recent years become a separate
attraction overlooking Preston Street. The sale comes less than two years after the Prescott celebrated its 90th anniversary. The Prescott’s story began in September 1934, when Giuseppe Costantini and Antonio Disipio opened the Preston Hotel. The two Italian immigrants wanted to establish a drinking establishment, but liquor licensing rules required them to have rooms available for overnight guests. The result was a hotel and tavern on what was then a very different Preston Street. Its location helped make it a popular stopping point. The establishment became known as the “last chance” spot along the highway heading out of Ottawa, eventually helping give the Prescott its name. But its early years were also shaped by one of the darker chapters in the history of Italian Canadians. During the Second World War, Italian Canadians were labelled “enemy aliens” by the federal government following Italy’s entry into the war. Costantini was among five Italian men from Ottawa who were detained. Costantini spent eight months at the internment camp in Petawawa. Before his detention, he surrendered his share of the business to his lawyer, John Ebbs Sr., in an effort to protect it. Ebbs was later able to reacquire the hotel’s liquor licence and remained a silent partner for decades. Disipio was also detained during the arrests but was released after an eight-hour interrogation. He was barred from returning to work, and the hotel was eventually closed by the RCMP until the end of the war. The business survived. The upstairs hotel rooms continued to be rented until 1978. At its peak, the establishment sold between 12,000 and 15,000 quarts of beer every week.
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HOMES & CONDOS Supplement to the Kitchissippi Times FALL 2026
By Anita Murray Stunning homes, festive seasonal decor, beautiful floral decorations: The annual Homes for the Holidays tour offers a trio of goodies to inspire you as we move toward the holiday season. Held over three days in November and offering seven homes this year to visit — plus a bonus Pop-Up Shop — the tour showcases homes from Rockcliffe to Manotick that are expertly styled by
top florists in conjunction with the homeowners’ holiday decorations to help you get your own creative juices flowing. This year’s tour runs Friday, Nov. 13, to Sunday, Nov. 15, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. “We have an eclectic group of homes that are old and new and big and small throughout the city,” says Sharen Findlay, a tour volunteer who helps organize the floral partners. Now in its 24th year, Homes for the Holidays is a major fundraiser for Hospice Care Ottawa, which
provides end-of-life care and services, at no charge, to those living with a life-limiting illness and their families. Since its inception in 2003, the tour has raised more than $2.9 million to help with Hospice Care’s operating costs.
Early-bird tickets are $55 if purchased by Oct. 31. After that they jump to $65. Scan the QR code for details and to order tickets, or visit homesfortheholidays2026.raiselysite.com/hometour.
35 • October 2026 • HOMES & CONDOS
Annual Homes for the Holidays tour pairs beautiful homes and top florists to spark your creativity
kitchissippi.com
A holiday house tour to get in the spirit
“This incredible achievement is thanks to the dedication of our volunteers, the generosity of our sponsors and the enthusiasm of the thousands of visitors who purchase tickets and come out to enjoy the tour each year,” says Taylor Mueller, director of fund development and communications for Hospice Care Ottawa. This year’s goal is to raise more than $100,000. “It's a really lovely way to support Hospice Care Ottawa and see some pretty beautiful homes,” says Sharon Lalonde, another tour volunteer and past co-chair who helps organize the homes that will be on the tour. Adds Findlay: “To me, it's the feeling of going around on the tour and … the camaraderie with other people looking to start their holiday season off. It's just a really nice feeling.” Continues on page 36
HOMES
This year’s homes
CIVIC HOSPITAL (1)
1
2
3
4
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While this is a new infill home, its exterior is influenced by the character of the 1940s homes that surround it. Inside, a focal point is the sweeping central staircase — the perfect backdrop for festive holiday decorations. Other features include an openconcept layout that connects a spacious formal dining room to a bright, expansive great room, which opens directly onto a large covered patio. This home is designed for effortless entertaining. “This is a real family home,” says Lalonde. Decorating will be a combination of the homeowners’ holiday decor and the efforts of Flowers Talk Tivoli, which has participated in the tour since it started.
ROCKCLIFFE PARK (2) 7
HOMES & CONDOS • October 2026 • 36
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An 18-foot, light-filled foyer sets the tone in this home built by Terra Nova Building Corp. Other features include a sun-filled living room anchored by a gas fireplace with a striking black granite surround, a grand piano that becomes the gathering spot over the holidays, and a high-end kitchen in quartz overlooking the garden. “There's a lot of warmth and homey-ness in that home,” says Findlay. Mood Moss Flowers will provide floral arrangements. “Rockcliffe is always a draw,” adds Lalonde. “Once this is decorated, it's going to be one of those really special ones in Rockcliffe again.”
THE GLEBE #1 (3)
This charming early 20th-century home showcases the Craftsman era, with renovations over the years — including a two-storey addition at the rear — that respect the home’s architectural roots. Features include generous ceiling heights and expansive windows that bring in an abundance of natural light and original details such as substantial solid-wood baseboards, classic crown mouldings, Carrera marble and traditional oak hardwood floors. Ottawa artists are featured throughout.
Lalonde also points to the backyard, where a change in elevation and a thicket of trees separating the home from its rear neighbour create an unexpected treat. “It has almost a rock face behind their house, which is lovely and very private.” Capital Florist is preparing the florals for this home.
THE GLEBE #2 (4)
A two-phase renovation in the past decade has nearly doubled the footprint of this 1929 home while carefully blending its historic character with thoughtful modern design. The renovation reimagined the home for contemporary living, with expanded living spaces, a spacious new kitchen, updated upper floors and a seamless flow throughout. Expect to see a lot of artwork, says Lalonde. “It's still true to the history of the home with a modern feel,” adds Findlay. This home will be decorated by Stoneblossom Floral Gallery.
GOLDEN TRIANGLE (5)
Steps from the Rideau Canal and set on a secluded street among mature trees, this is a distinctive urban home with European-inspired character boasting high ceilings, large windows and open-concept living spaces that provide a beautiful backdrop for holiday displays. For more than 40 years, the owner has gathered distinctive holiday treasures that fill a storage room and help transform the home inside and out for Christmas. At the heart of the display is a spectacular Christmas tree adorned with more than 700 ornaments. “It’s decor that's out of this world,” says Lalonde. “We are not using a florist in this one because the homeowner has so many decorations that it fills the whole house… She absolutely loves Christmas.”
ALTA VISTA (6)
This circa 1950s bungalow recently underwent a transformation, expanding from a modest 1,500 square feet of closed-off rooms into
HOMES a spacious 3,000-square-foot, openconcept home. A goal of the year-long remodel was to focus on the beautiful gardens front and rear. As a result, it now includes plenty of windows and a horseshoe courtyard feel. “It's very modern, very beautiful,” says Lalonde. Planted Arrow Flowers & Gifts from Winchester is decorating this home and the owner is aiming to have a 12-foot tree in the living room, Lalonde adds.
MANOTICK (7)
Hospital neighbourhood.
(2) Two-storey home in Rockcliffe (3) An early 20th-century Craftsman home in the Glebe has stayed true to form. Park by Terra Nova Building Corp.
(4) This 1940s Glebe home has been recently renovated.
(5) A Golden Triangle townhome
explodes with holiday spirit every year.
SHOP
The unofficial eighth stop on the tour is the Pop-Up Shop of handcrafted gifts, seasonal items and foodstuffs to help you get ready for the holiday season. This year it is being held at Capital Funeral Home & Cemetery on Prince of Wales Drive. The Pop-Up Shop has slightly different hours than the home tour hours, running 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. on Friday (with a Sip & Shop event from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m.) and then on Saturday from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. The PopUp Shop is not open on Sunday. “Expect a festive shopping experience featuring more than 15 local artisans, makers and small businesses, all gathered under one roof,” says Mueller. “From handcrafted gifts and beautiful home decor to jewelry, art, delicious treats and unique holiday treasures, there will be something for everyone on your list.” The Friday night Sip & Shop offers “a festive night out with shopping, drinks and plenty of holiday cheer,” she says. “It’s a chance to browse the vendors, discover something special, socialize with friends and get into the spirit of the season.” To purchase tickets for this year’s Homes for the Holidays tour, visit the tour website.
Wall Beds, Desk Beds & Cabinet Beds
Located at 376 Madison Avenue 613-798-2552 www.theguestroom.ca Ottawa’s largest showroom of Wall Beds, Desk Beds & Cabinet Beds Tailor-made solutions to maximize any space and create the room that suites your needs. Our goal is to provide you with the best selection of alternative and unconventional sleeping solutions all in one location. We are specialists in what we do, and look forward to seeing you!
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(6) This Alta Vista bungalow has been renovated an expanded.
(7) This Manotick estate home first
appeared on a Homes for the Holidays virtual tour. ALL PHOTOS: BRIAN HUM
Anita Murray is the co-founder of the award-winning housing information website AllThingsHome.ca. The veteran journalist has covered the Ottawa housing industry since 2011.
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37 • October 2026 • HOMES & CONDOS
(1) A custom infill home in the Civic
THE POP-UP
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This custom-built stone home on an estate lot in Manotick showcases craftsmanship. A highlight is a 20-foot, floor-to-ceiling window that offers an uninterrupted view of the surrounding forest. Architectural details flourish, including elegant custom mouldings, columns, grand light fixtures, marble and porcelain flooring, oak doors and floors, an arresting 20-foot limestone fireplace, and intricate wood-inlay accents that frame the two staircases. The home was first on the Homes for the Holidays tour when it had to shift to virtual viewing during the pandemic. “We went back to them because it was such a spectacular house that we really wanted people to see inside,” says Lalonde. “We're happy to have that house back on the tour.” Mill Street Florist, which traditionally decorates Manotick-area homes on the tour, is back for this one.
DON’T FORGET
SPONSORED CONTENT
How to Replace Your Front Door Without Losing Your Home’s Character O
HOMES & CONDOS • October 2026 • 38
kitchissippi.com
ttawa is home to over 300 heritage buildings and 20 conservation districts, but keeping a home’s unique look matters for more than just historic properties. In areas like Westboro and Hintonburg, many older houses still depend on their original proportions, materials, and small details to stand out. The front door is one of those important details. Swapping out a drafty or worn entrance can boost comfort, security, and energy efficiency. However, choosing the wrong style or glass, or changing the opening too much, can make an older home look out of place. Here’s what to keep, what you can update, and when performance should come first. HOW TO CHOOSE A FRONT DOOR FOR AN OLDER OTTAWA HOME Start with your doorway itself, not just a catalogue. Pay attention to the width, sidelights, transom, trim depth, porch size, and how the entrance lines up with nearby windows. Changing too many of these features at once can upset the balance of a narrow or symmetrical front. Also, check the condition of the structure. If the sill is rotting, the frame is damaged, or the opening is no longer square, it might be better to replace the whole frame instead of just the door. Keeping the original size while rebuilding the frame usually looks better than squeezing a standard door into an old space. STEEL VS. FIBREGLASS ENTRY DOORS: WHICH FITS THE HOUSE? Both steel and fibreglass doors work well in Ottawa. Steel doors are good for smooth painted finishes and simple designs. Fibreglass often looks better if you want deeper panels or a wood-grain look that matches a traditional home. When looking for new entry doors in Ottawa, consider more than the material. Panel design, glass area, sidelights, hardware, and colour often matter
more for your door’s appearance. A plain door can work for a modern home, while a simple panelled style usually suits an older brick house better. HOW MUCH GLASS SHOULD A FRONT DOOR HAVE? Adding glass to your door can let more light into a dark entryway, but more glass can also affect privacy and insulation. Frosted or textured glass is helpful if your door faces a busy street or is close to a neighbour. Compare energy ratings for the complete door system. Under ENERGY STAR Canada’s current specification, qualifying residential windows and doors must have a U-factor of no more than 1.22 W/ m²·K or an Energy Rating of at least 34. Air infiltration and exfiltration must also be no more than 1.5 L/s/m². These numbers give homeowners a clearer way to compare doors than relying on an “energyefficient” label. WHY FRONT DOOR INSTALLATION MATTERS IN OLDER HOMES Even the best door won’t work well if the opening isn’t prepared properly. An uneven sill, gaps, missing insulation, or misaligned weatherstripping can still cause drafts and make the door hard to use. Older homes need extra attention because doorways can shift over time. After decades of settlement, repairs and previous renovations, an older opening may no longer be perfectly square. Your door installers should verify the sill, set the frame level and plumb, insulate the perimeter and confirm even compression against the weatherstripping. Owners of designated heritage properties or homes inside a Heritage Conservation District should check with the City before changing exterior features. Ottawa requires approval for alterations to designated properties and properties within its heritage districts. Properties listed only on the Heritage Register are not subject to the same alteration restrictions.
Shopping for new residential exterior doors? Contact Ecoline online at ecolinewindows.ca, visit their showroom at 2081 Merivale Rd #201, Ottawa, ON K2G 1G9 or call 343-655-4214 for a free consultation and quote!
Illustration is artist concept. E. & O.E.
39 • October 2026 • HOMES & CONDOS
RiverhausLiving.ca
kitchissippi.com
Introducing Riverhaus, a collection of exclusive rental residences perfectly positioned on the bank of the Rideau River in the award-winning Greystone Village in Old Ottawa East. This is your final opportunity to call this exceptional rental community home.
HOMES
A home tour with a twist Explore renovations, custom homes and showrooms — and meet the companies behind these fabulous spaces
HOMES & CONDOS • October 2026 • 40
kitchissippi.com
By Anita Murray Thoughtful renovations, beautiful custom homes, inspiring showrooms: the variety on this year’s RenoTour Parade of Homes offers a buffet of ideas, creativity and craftsmanship for homeowners. Started in 2015, this annual tour of Ottawa homes is anything but typical, giving valuable insight into the abilities and workmanship of top renovators, builders and suppliers for anyone who is considering their own home improvement project. The tour is organized by the Greater Ottawa Home Builders’ Association (GOHBA) and showcases the work of several members of RenoMark, a national program that identifies professional contractors who have signed on to the Canadian Home Builders’ Association RenoMark renovators code of conduct, which protects homeowners. The eight stops on this year’s tour include renovations ranging from a kitchen makeover to additions that transform inefficient floor plans, two custom homes that show off clever design details
and three showrooms offering a range of possibilities for kitchens, bathrooms, closets, staircases and more. “RenoTour is about seeing what’s possible — and there’s something different about experiencing it in person,” says Jason Burggraaf, executive director of GOHBA. “Whether you’re stepping inside a transformed home or visiting a showroom, it’s a great way to find inspiration, ask questions and see firsthand what a professional can bring to your own home. RenoTour is a great opportunity to see what’s possible and connect with the professionals who can help bring ideas to life.” The tour is a chance to not only see these projects up close, it’s an opportunity to ask the companies behind them your questions, on site. It’s a fantastic research tool as you plan your renovation, custom home or other home improvement project. “What makes the tour so special is that finished renovations and custom homes aren't normally open to the public. Photos are great but seeing it in person really helps you
picture what’s possible for your own home,” says Stephanie Haw of Amsted Design-Build, which is showcasing two homes on the tour — a custom home and a renovation that includes an addition. “It’s an immersive experience for homeowners, and a chance to get inspired, ask questions, and see the details up close. And for us, it’s a fun way to show off the craftsmanship, creativity and care that our team puts into every project.”
There is no charge for the one-day, self-guided tour, although some tour stops may be collecting charitable donations. The tour runs from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Sunday, Oct. 18. If you can’t make it to the inperson event, 3D virtual tours of most of the homes and showrooms will be available afterwards at RenoTourParadeOfHomes.ca. Continues on page 42 For details, scan the QR code on this page or visit the url.
This transitional home balances beautiful gathering spaces with thoughtful accessibility. From the rounded staircase and detailed ceilings to custom millwork, heated floors and an elevator, these subtle details add personality and visual interest at every turn. Together, these homes offer plenty of ideas and inspiration for what’s possible when your home is designed around the way you live, Amsted says. Kevin Belanger Photography
Point3D Commercial Imaging
Gordon King Photography
The transformation of this split-level home shows how a rear addition completely reimagined a once-boxed-in home, creating a larger kitchen made for entertaining, a dedicated primary suite, gym space and a more open, functional flow throughout.
Designed with the future in mind, this kitchen renovation blends a timeless esthetic with thoughtful, aging-in-place features to support independent living for many years, ARTium says. Durable, premium finishes using warm, natural materials were selected, and abundant storage solutions were integrated for a sophisticated space that is also functional.
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HOMEBUYERS • OWNERS • RENTERS
AllThingsHome.ca
• Find inspiration • Explore renovation ideas • Connect with local pros • Discover Ottawa projects • Get tips & advice
41 • October 2026 • HOMES & CONDOS
Start your research here!
kitchissippi.com
Are you ready?
HOMES
Kevin Belanger Photography
For more than two decades, the secondgeneration family business has created stunning and award-winning custom stairs and railings that elevate homes throughout Eastern Ontario.
Spectrum Kitchen & Bath Design
For the tour, Spectrum is opening its extensive showroom so visitors can see and feel the possibilities when it comes to elevating your space to meet your vision and goals. Spectrum collaborates to create refined, highly functional kitchens and bathrooms that exude timeless elegance, the company says.
WHAT: RenoTour Parade of Homes WHEN: Sunday, Oct. 18 TIME: 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. (most homes
can be toured virtually after the event)
WHERE: Various homes & showrooms in Ottawa
COST: It’s free, but some tour stops
may be collecting charitable donations
MORE INFORMATION:
RenoTourParadeofHomes.ca (or scan the QR code)
HOMES & CONDOS • October 2026 • 42
kitchissippi.com
Accurate Stairs and Railings
This contemporary home demonstrates how thoughtful design, sustainability and everyday functionality can work together seamlessly. Certified net zero and operating about 52 per cent more energy efficiently than a codecompliant natural gas home, this all-electric residence maximizes its corner lot through an innovative L-shaped design centred around a private courtyard. It features an openconcept kitchen and living space, custom millwork, a dedicated home office, generous storage solutions and beautiful indoor-outdoor connections.
Laurysen Kitchens
Laurysen's new showroom opened in 2025 as the fullest expression of everything the Laurysen family has learned since 1970 and quickly became one of only 10 showrooms in North America to win an NKBA innovation award in its size category, the company says. The centre is a collection of complete, fully built rooms: kitchens, bathrooms, laundry rooms, mudrooms and closets.
IF YOU GO
Lagois Design-Build-Renovate
The thoughtfully designed addition to this home blends seamlessly, making it feel as though it has always been there, Lagois says. Every decision was shaped around the homeowners' unique needs, lifestyle and long-term goals. A new primary suite addition is paired with updates throughout, resulting in a home that not only looks cohesive, it functions better.
Bespoke Hardwood Flooring 66 Iber Rd., Stittsville
LogsEnd.com
Reclaimed Wide Plank Flooring
kitchissippi.com
Every Obasan mattress and bedding accessory is fully customized to your unique needs and handcrafted in Ottawa using 100% organic materials. Complete your bedroom with products designed for lasting comfort, deep rest, and total peace of mind. Book a consultation and visit us to learn more 155 Colonnade Road S, Ottawa, ON K2E 7K1
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obasan.ca
Sleep the way nature intended
2026-08-12 3:15 PM
43 • October 2026 • HOMES & CONDOS
Come Live The Obasan Experience
October 2026 • 44
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RETURNING THIS OCTOBER
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