By Nicholas Kohler
Ambassador’s Row, home to many foreign dignitaries, looks more like a logging road than a tree-lined strip of real estate.
The truck-torn muddy ruts, trenches and piping just don’t jive with the Tudor-style homes of this wealthy garden village since the “new” Ottawa started overhauling Rockcliffe’s sewer system last summer.
“It’s not really nice to have that,” laughs Ambassador Erhan Ogut, who flies Turkey’s flag outside his residence on Crescent Road.
“It seems they’re taking rather a long time. Of course, it’s not great fun. It makes getting in and out of our home rather difficult.”
The culprit? Diplomats blame amalgamation, which sucked Rockcliffe into Ottawa two years ago.
The construction work replaces ancient sewers, often flooding basements – including Ogut’s.
Planned before amalgamation, Ottawa shaved the current two-year project down to one season.
Despite a well-heeled ratepayer, the old Village of Rockcliffe may not have had the cash to cover such quick work.
“I have to admit, we didn’t borrow money,” says Gordon Roston, Rockcliffe’s deputy mayor for six years before amalgamation. But they also employed a pay-as-you-go funding model.
“The reality of that, of course, is that you have to spread your sewer maintenance program and your sewer upgrading program over a number of years.”
Jane Dobell, ex-councillor and current Rockcliffe Park Residents Association president, agrees: “We did what the taxes could bear.”
Dobell welcomes the new sewers. “If you had said to me before amalgamation, what are the pluses and what are the minuses, I would have said, ‘well maybe in the new hierarchy of needs our sewers will be done faster.’”
Enter the new Ottawa: suddenly Rockcliffe has access to a deeper pool of money – if not pockets – and a swift pace that the old village, isn’t used to.
For years Rockcliffe’s winding, tree-lined lanes were patched and pot-holed.
“We were pretty careful not to fix our roads,” Dobell says. “We used to laugh and say, ‘that’s our method of speed control.’”
Instead Rockcliffe spent according to its own idiosyncratic priorities, from leaf-sucking machines to driveway snow removal at individual residences to twice-weekly garbage pickups.
As Vanier and other urban communities grew closer to Rockcliffe’s borders, the village enclave of 2,300 people retained its 1920s country atmosphere.
“Rockcliffe in many respects had the flavour, the look and feel, of a small village,” says Rideau-Rockcliffe Coun. Jacques Legendre.
With homes of $500,000 and up, residents have jealousy guarded that village flavour.
Designated a heritage conservation district in 1998, Rockcliffe’s bylaws dictate everything from building-to-lot ratios to proposed home “mass.”
Ottawa’s new official plan, due as early as March 2003, could scuttle such protective bylaws. Add to this a remote city government, and many residents fear the old ways are fading.
“We were a separate municipality that had a clear mind about how it wanted to manage this area,” says Anthony Keith, former chair of Rockcliffe’s architectural-conservation advisory committee. “Obviously it’s not that simple any more.”
One issue has been trees, and Rockcliffe has lots. While greater Ottawa’s tree coverage stands at five per cent, Rockcliffe’s is 50 per cent.
Once managed by Gawn Croll, Rockcliffe’s full-time arborist, Ottawa has taken over.
“It was a big job. It was a good job. But it’s been eaten up by the city,” says Croll, 70, who retired after 30 years on the job.
Rockcliffe’s trees were like his children:
“Even the ones that are now just nothing but stumps and a few branches up top because of storms – some of them are still favourites of mine.”
Croll keeps a copy of Rockcliffe’s tree inventory, with notes on every tree, at his home.
Rockcliffe wasn’t just trees, though: “There were a lot of stories about the whole village, as far as that goes – you know what I mean? What do you call it? Hanky panky?” he laughs
Told construction has brought a number of trees down, Croll was distraught. “Was there none of them that they saved?”
Ogut shares Croll’s concern. He says workers have felled several trees that once lined Crescent.
“I would be missing the trees,” Ogut says. “Of course they have planted new ones – but trees take a very long, long time to grow.”