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• 1 2025-07-21T18:42:12+00:00 The Cuthbertson/Oliver House:
  146 Bayswater Ave 10 plain 146 2025-10-11T18:00:24+00:00 Hintonburg is a unique neighbourhood in modern Ottawa, with many independently owned businesses and festivals. The area is full of beautiful old buildings. Of these, 146 Bayswater is not necessarily the most striking. Standing on the corner of Bayswater and Gladstone, it appears to be a perfectly innocuous red brick house: three apartments, in keeping with the other residences around it.
  
  Yet, the investigation of such an ordinary building led to the discovery of larger stories I had never heard. This was the first time I learned about the Great Fire of 1900, and reading about that led me to the history of Ottawa’s fire-fighters: a lesson in how short-sightedness in municipal planning can lead to the devastation of an entire city. Learning that one of the residents was named H. J. Oliver led me to the story of J. Oliver & Sons Furniture Company and how it became one of the largest companies in Edwardian Canada. Best of all, investigating David Cuthbertson (the builder of 146 Bayswater) led me to stand in front of a gravestone in Beechwood Cemetery, with a bouquet in my hand. It is perhaps odd to feel this way, but standing in front of the Cuthbertson grave, having read so much about their life, made me feel like I had just found a friend from across a crowded room. I walked back to my bus stop and looked at the streets with new eyes: it was this very same city that the Cuthbertsons had lived in. It may have been expanded, old cities may have been torn down and new ones put up, but on this very same land they had walked.
  
  Please come with me, as I bring you on the same journey I have traveled.