Ken’s Bygone Sandy Hill

Family photos of winters bygone

Ken Clavette

During challenging times, I look to history, sometimes to help me understand what is happening, but often just as a way to escape to those bygone days.

I inherited two photo albums from the family that built my home in 1898 and owned it until my wife and I purchased the house in 1990. Those albums document the Merritt family’s life, mainly from about 1915 to 1925. When I pulled them out not long ago, I enjoyed the number of photos that they took during the winter. They were playful and showed them having fun.

I like photos from the past because they show us the activities and the fashion style popular in those bygone days. I thought I would share these images as my Bygone Sandy Hill column.

At the time, hockey was in the early days of “the craze.” The Ottawa “Silver Seven” won the Stanley Cup in 1903, 1904, 1905, and 1906. Then, renamed the Ottawa Senators, they continued winning the cup in 1909, 1911, 1920, 1921, 1923, and 1927. Sandy Hill played host to the games those early teams played.

The Dey bothers operated arenas in several locations in Ottawa. Two were in or near our community. From 1884 until the Canada Atlantic Railway was built along the canal in 1895, the first Dey’s rink was where the National Defence Headquarters now is on Laurier Avenue. Then they operated a new arena at Gladstone and Bay streets; after that second arena burnt down, they came back to the neighbourhood in 1920. Their third rink was back on Laurier but now just west of Sandy Hill on the banks of the Rideau Canal where Confederation Park is, nice and close for those wanting to attend games. That final arena was torn down in 1927.

The kids of Sandy Hill were hockey crazy, and a young Ross Merritt was one of them. He worked for Birkett’s Hardware store on Rideau Street and with several other young men from Sandy Hill played on a team that Thomas Birkett sponsored. Hence the “B” on the hockey sweater in the photographs. They won a city championship in 1912.