A bustling hub for business and entertainment, Sparks Street has been a city landmark for the past two centuries.
Stretching from Bronson Avenue to Elgin Street, the district is home to several of Ottawa’s prominent banks and office buildings, is a summer outdoor patio haven, and the site of a famous murder.
Thomas D’Arcy McGee, a Father of Confederation, was walking home on April 7, 1868, after speaking on national unity at Parliament, just a block away. He was shot as he reached the door of his rooming house at Sparks and Metcalfe — close to the site of a modern office building and pub that now bear his name.
Early settler Nicholas Sparks had mapped out the street when Ottawa was still called Bytown. Sparks owned the land between Bronson Avenue and the Rideau Canal and south from Wellington to Somerset streets.
Sparks Street cut through his property from Bank Street to Elgin Street.
The bulk of the road, from Kent to Elgin, is a designated pedestrian mall — the first of its kind in Canada, according to the Sparks Street Business Improvement Area.
As it was in the past, Sparks remains a commercial centre, home to several historic banks, including the Bank of Montreal and the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce, as well as historic buildings such as the Canada Post Office, built in 1937, and the Ottawa Electric Company building, former headquarters of the firm that ran Ottawa’s streetcars before they were decommissioned in 1959.
Today, on a street where history is engrained into its worn cobblestones, politicians, public servants and tourists alike stroll past the shops, eateries and tourist attractions Sparks has to offer.
Characters of all sorts can be found on Sparks. Street musicians and artists flock to Ottawa Busker’s Festival in the summer. The street is also home to CBC’s Ottawa headquarters, and camera crews often set up to film interviews along the busy street. Patios are packed in the summer months.
From French cafés to saxophone-blaring jazz bars, from offices to stores to apartments, Sparks Street is a jigsaw puzzle of century-old history and charm.