What’s in a name? Wading through the history of Bruyère Street
By Curtis Wolfe
Few streets in Lowertown have had as many name changes as has Bruyère Street.
Between 1847 and 1855, property lots in this part of Lowertown West were purchased from the Crown by three notable figures: lumber baron, Joseph Aumond, businessman and politician, the Hon. Thomas MacKay, and the Sisters of Charity of Ottawa, founded and led by Bytown pioneer, Elisabeth Bruyère.
In the 1850s, the Catholic order moved their Mother House and hospital from St. Patrick Street to the location where the building still stands at Bruyère Street and Sussex Drive. The roadway south of the new Mother House and hospital became known as Nunnery Street.
For several years starting in 1866, the army took over the Sisters’ stone hospital. The Sisters continued to provide care for patients in a temporary wooden structure nearby but further east. The stone hospital was used as a barracks, and perhaps because of this, the Nunnery Street was later renamed Bolton in honour of Major Daniel Bolton, the lieutenant-colonel and engineer who succeeded Colonel By as Superintending Royal Engineer in 1832. For a period, there were two Bolton Streets with the other Bolton Street two blocks north, where it still exists today.
As Bytown expanded, the section of the street east of King Edward Avenue became known as Water Street, so named due to swampy ground and seasonal flooding from the Rideau River. One journalist claimed residents built their homes on wooden piles to stay above the water and even in summer they had to wear rubber boots to reach their homes.
By the late 1870s, the entire stretch – from Sussex to the Rideau River – was unified under the name Water Street, putting an end to the confusion caused by having two Bolton Streets in the same area.
Persistent drainage problems continued to plague the eastern section of Water Street for several years. A report in the Daily Citizen in 1877 called for the city’s health inspector to investigate pools of stagnant water believed to be spreading illness. In 1885, frustrated residents threatened legal action over an overflowing drain damaging their properties.
In 1945, the Sisters of Charity advocated renaming Water Street after Elisabeth Bruyère to mark their 100th anniversary. Bruyère is among the most influential pioneers in the city’s history. Arriving when Bytown was still a rough lumber town, she founded the Sisters of Charity, the first hospital, a school, and an orphanage when early Bytown had few social supports.
The first letter to the city’s Board of Control, calling for the renaming, was received with “some misgivings” due to the estimated costs in the thousands of dollars for new signs, changing land property deeds in the registry office, and revising city maps.
Foreshadowing the mindset that would drive community displacement and mass demolitions in the northern and eastern parts of Lowertown in the 1960s and 1970s, a writer to the Evening Citizen argued that Elisabeth Bruyère deserved a better honour than having a street renamed for her in an area that, he believed, “will probably be in a slum district” in 100 years.
The community disagreed – 400 of the 429 families living on Water Street signed a petition calling for the renaming.
On February 20, 1945, the Board of Control unanimously voted to recommend to city council to recognize the work of Bruyère and her congregation on the same date as the founding of the Sisters of Charity of Ottawa. One month later, city council approved the name change. Near Sussex and Bruyère Streets, an Ontario Heritage Trust plaque commemorating Bruyère was installed as part of the anniversary celebrations.
