Accessibility and Access Keys [0]
The closing of the Domtar paper-making operations on Chaudiere Island gives the federal government an opportunity to acquire a property it’s been coveting for about 100 years.
Although Domtar representatives have not said the Ottawa River industrial site is up for sale, former National Capital Commission chairwoman Jean Pigott hopes the government can buy all or part of the land that overlooks the spectacular and historic Chaudiere Falls.
Company officials say they currently plan to sell a power plant near the falls for $35 million to $50 million.
“One of my greatest dreams is that the Chaudiere would be opened up for people to see,” Mrs. Pigott said yesterday. “This opens up a chance for the NCC to own all of the island. It is one of the most wonderful sites in the capital because of its history. You can still see the portage route the Indians and the pioneers took around the falls for hundreds of years.”
Currently, she says, people can see the falls properly only while driving across Chaudiere Bridge, which links LeBreton Flats with Hull.
Mrs. Pigott argues the island’s buildings and the falls would be transformed into a major tourist attraction if the public were allowed to visit.
“This site has incredible national heritage significance. It is a national treasure,” concurred Mark Brandt, an Ottawa architect who prepared development plans for Chaudiere Island and nearby Victoria island for the NCC. “Our report on the 44-acre site encouraged multiple uses, including industrial uses much like Granville Island in Vancouver,” Mr. Brandt said.
“We could have a whole series of pathways, over bridges and along the edge of the water throughout the site. The NCC has some safety concerns, but the hydro generating station conducts tours and has managed to allow public access in a controlled manner.”
In fact, he said, a “walk of waters” could be built allowing visitors to walk on top of the ring dam above the falls.
Federal planners have coveted the Domtar industrial lands, formerly owned by the E. B. Eddy Company, for almost 100 years and have long considered the Chaudiere and Victoria islands as prime building blocks in the grand vision for the core of the nation’s capital.
In the mind of Jacques Greber, the French planner who created the blueprint for the capital more than a half-century ago, the islands were a kind of treed oasis behind the magnificent natural feature of the falls themselves.
The NCC has nurtured the dream. On Victoria Island, it has visions of an aboriginal centre, with 137,000 square feet of space, a renovated Carbide Mill, lookouts, footbridges and a floating quay. The area is rich with First Nations history, as aboriginal people carried their canoes along a portage on the Gatineau side of the Ottawa River for more than 1,000 years in a detour around the falls.
On Chaudiere Island, the NCC would like to see rehabilitation of buildings such as the Booth Board Mill—now derelict—that would preserve some element of the island’s industrial past.
There has been a mill, in some form of corporate ownership, by the Chaudiere since the early 1800s when Philemon Wright built a small sawmill there. In 1829, his son Ruggles Wright built a the first timber slide in North America for transporting logs down the Ottawa River. The slide was used until the early 1970s to transport softwood logs used in paper making.
Ezra Butler Eddy, an American entrepreneur who moved to Hull in 1854, built a match factory and later, a sawmill, on Chaudiere Island. In 1998, the E.B. Eddy company sold all the mills, buildings, sluices, dams and canals that had been built on the island.
When asked yesterday whether Domtar was closing its Chaudiere Island plant because the NCC had shown interest in the site, Ghislain Dinel, vice-president of technology and operations, said that it was purely a business decision.
Mr. Dinel said Domtar would listen to the NCC if it showed any interest in the site. He added to the best is his knowledge “there is no such thing as a deal at the present moment.”
NCC spokeswoman Eva Schacherl said redeveloping the islands for public use is part of a 50-year plan for the core area, but there is no money to acquire the land now.
“On Chaudiere Island there are plans for public access to Chaudiere Falls, but there are issues about what to do with heritage buildings on the site,” Ms. Schacherl said.
“There are opportunities for interpreting out industrial past, potential commercial, retail or other uses and for views of Parliament and the Chaudiere Falls.”