Britannia Village is a neighbourhood in the greater Britannia area, part of Bay Ward in the west end of Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, about 13 km from the Canadian Parliament Buildings.
Britannia Village has a rich history and architecture, having been founded some eight years before Bytown (est. 1826), the former name of Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. The history of the village is interwoven with the creation of the adjacent Britannia Amusement Park, once known as Coney Island of the north, and today simply known as Britannia Park. The character of villagers is significantly influenced by its natural surroundings.
Geographically, the village is located on a broad peninsula and is largely defined by natural boundaries. According to the Ottawa Neighbourhood Study, the village is bordered by the Ottawa River to the North, Lac Deschênes and Britannia Park to the west, the Trans Canada Trail to the south, and Mud Lake (Britannia Conservation Area, 79 hectares) to the east. Lac Deschênes is home to 4 sailing clubs including the Britannia Yacht Club which is located in the village. The village also borders on Britannia Beach, one of four beaches in Ottawa. Britannia Road is the only road into and out of the village and the only access to the Britannia Water Purification Plant.
The village has a total population of 610 people in 270 private households.Complements of Statistics Canada (Custom Services – Central Region) who geocoded the village geography against their geographic database and then used an automated tool to provide the 2021 census data. The village has an active association (Britannia Village Community Association or BVCA) and a community Facebook page (Friends of Britannia Village).
History
The archaeological record from the early 1900s provides ample evidence of Indigenous peoples on the beaches of Lac Deschênes, and hence in and around the village; the evidence is largely in the form of indigenous beach workshops where the Algonquin Anishinaabe would chip out flint arrowheads or laboriously grind an edge into a stone tomahawk. Archaeological artifacts were discovered at Chartrand Island and other locations on the Ontario side of Lac Deschênes. In a subsequent publication, the same author postulates that the flint for toolmaking was likely picked up or quarried in Gatineau and Ottawa (current names) and subsequently transported to the beach workshops.
The neighbourhood was established in 1818.
Mill town (1826–1887) In 1826, Captain John Le Breton, a seriously injured soldier in the War of 1812, first established a flour mill and then a successful lumber mill in the village, then part of the Nepean Township. At the time, as part of the Ottawa River timber trade, logs were floated down the river in timber rafts (bundled logs) to get to the burgeoning construction market in Bytown (Ottawa), some 14 km away. However, the Deschênes Rapids, with its vertical drop of about 9 ft, presented a formidable challenge. The timber rafts had to be disassembled, guided through the rapids one log at-a-time by 2 or 3 raftsmen, and subsequently reassembled. By creating a mill at the head of the Deschênes Rapids, Le Breton was able to convince logging companies to cut their logs at his sawmill to avoid the cost of both reassembling the timber rafts and floating them to Bytown. LeBreton transported the cut lumber overland by horse and cart to Bytown along Richmond Rd that had been created a few years earlier. Mill workers included labourers and carpenters, and most lived in the village.
The mill changed owners (Nelson G. Robinson, 1846; John McAmmond Jr., 1873), eventually producing up to 100,000 boards per year (1860), and also including a carding mill, carpenter shop and a forge. In the process, a second sawmill was established in the village along the bay near the foot of Rowatt St. The last owner of the mills (John C. Jamieson) could not make the business profitable because of a stock market crash and competition from larger mills. By 1875, a post office (48 Britannia Rd) had been established in the village on the basis of 25 residences.
Summer-cottage resort (1887–1960) In 1887, rather than converting the mills into pulp and paper factories, which some of his competitors were doing, Jamieson chose to convert them into summer-rental residences with ample storage space underneath for boats. This new tourist destination was served by the Canada Central Railway line (est. 1870) that brought tourists from Ottawa to the village. Summer tourists included the Confederation Poet Archibald Lampman who would rent out his Ottawa residence and live in the village for the summer. Lampman’s sonnets, particularly those on the subject of nature, are among the best in the English language.
Cottage-building in the village flourished at the beginning of this era because of the creation of a major amusement park adjacent to the village and the establishment of a boat club also in 1887. The main tourist attraction in the amusement park was a long, thin, wooden pier which was built on the rubble from a canal intended for generating power.
Engineering feats
The Metropolitan Electric Co canal
Following the invention of dynamite in 1867, the Metropolitan Electric Co. (Peoria, Illinois) excavated a canal [(12 ft deep × 150 ft wide) × 2,500 ft long (approx.)] on the north shore of the village to generate electricity. The Hull Electric Company had already successfully used the Deschênes Rapids to generate electricity on the other side of the Ottawa River. Between 1898 and 1900, Metropolitan Electric employed up to 350 workers at one time and spent nearly half a million dollars (about $17M in 2022 dollars). The company ran out of money and the project was abandoned before the powerhouse could be installed. Most of the excavated rubble was piled alongside the canal; on the north side, this resulted in the formation of a thin island that is easily visible when standing on the shore of the river at the Britannia Water Purification Plant. Rubble piled on the south side resulted in a large breakwater that now has a hiking trail on top of it.
At the time, the canal construction project was very newsworthy and a timeline compilation of 46 archived newspaper articles is available, as are online photographs. Even though the hydroelectric project failed, the Metropolitan Electric canal made possible two highly innovative projects: the Britannia Pier and the harbours of the Britannia Yacht Club.
The Britannia Pier
Large boulders from the excavated Metropolitan Electric canal were used as the foundation for the wood-surfaced Britannia Pier. By February 22, 1900, men had cut a huge hole in the ice to the bottom of Lac Deschênes in the shape/dimensions of the pier (i.e. approximately 30 ft by 1,050 ft, later extended to 1,450 ft); the ice was at least 20 inches thick, but considerably less thick than the prior year. Large boulders were then carted by 25 teams of horses/men from the south shore of the Metropolitan Electric canal and dumped/layered into the hole. According to one report, the stone work was 32 ft wide at the bottom and 20 ft wide at the top, with the depth varying up to 11 ft in height. This operation was carried out during a mild spell when the temperature hovered between −1 °C and −4 °C (four days later on February 26 it was −28 °C). Later when the ice melted, the top of the layered stones was covered with concrete and the wooden pier was built on top. The building method of the Britannia Pier is relatively unique for its scale and the direct use of ice openings for foundational work. However, in the era from 1893 to 1930, there were other examples of piers being built using ice. However, these involved using a wooden crib on the surface of the ice, loading boulders into the crib, and waiting for the ice to melt to sink the boulders onto the river bottom.
By June 5, 1900, only some fifteen weeks after starting the work, the pier was largely finished except for completion of wooden benches running along both sides. Lighting on telephone poles was accomplished by using electric lamps, each containing two sealed globes. This patented technology was said to be superior to lighting technology used in downtown Ottawa. The Britannia Pier was the only pier of its kind in Canada.
Harbours of the Britannia Yacht Club (BYC) Some 50 years after the Metropolitan Electric project, the Britannia Yacht Club (BYC) used the abandoned canal to create two highly protected harbours. In 1949, a year before the harbour construction began, the BYC fleet only had about 45 boats (3 schooners, more than a dozen larger cruising-class boats and 30 dinghies) with a membership of about 200. The harbours replaced the wave-lashed moorings which in previous years had been responsible for damaging and sinking of many of BYC's fleet. To expand the club, clearly BYC needed more and better mooring facilities. The initiative was led by Captain Thomas Fuller and Reginald Bruce. Hundreds of volunteers, over many years, were recruited by the Ladies Auxiliary. By the end of the 1960s, the BYC had 340 sail boats, not including power crafts, and a membership of 1,250. The harbours were created from 1950 to 1969 in two phases.
In the first phase, 1950 – 1951, tonnes of rock and shale were first removed from the bottom of the Metropolitan canal and used to build a retaining wall between the canal and the Deschênes Rapids. The floor of the canal was graded to provide a constant depth throughout. Necessary permits were obtained to allow the BYC to utilize the islands (Crimson Cove and Mauve Cove) resulting from the creation of the canal. A giant dam across the canal (about 200 ft long, 15 ft high and 30 ft thick) was built. The harbour entrance was created by blasting out a 50 ft bedrock ledge separating the canal from Lac Deschênes.
In the second phase, 1963 – 1969, the channel between Britannia Island and the mainland was dammed to create the inner harbour, which was subsequently dug out. Boat traffic between the inner and main harbours was facilitated by blasting a channel between them. The inner harbour is one of the best-sheltered yacht harbours in North America.
Britannia Amusement Park
In 1900, the Ottawa Electric Railway (OER) company opened an 18-acre amusement park which was expanded to 53 acres in 1904; the firm purchased the land from Britannia Village landowners. The amusement park, with its pier that was considered an architectural wonder at the time, was often compared to the amusement park at Coney Island, NY. An estimated 12,000 to 15,000 visitors attended the opening (May 24, 1900) of the park. Like other transportation companies of the era, OER electric trolleys were busy during the workweek but under utilized during the weekend. In an era without cars, the OER built the park as a fresh-air, weekend escape from polluted Bytown, thereby increasing their trolley use and income. The park was also serviced by a Canadian Pacific Railway line.
The park became one of Canada's top tourist attractions at the time, and facilitated a rapid residential housing/cottage boom in the village. In 1890, 1900 and 1910, the combined number of cottages and permanent residences in the village was 38, 83 and 166, respectively. During this era, the village also became quite fashionable when several prominent Ottawa figures began to reside there. The park had a reputation as the People's Playground.