Every year thousands of winter enthusiasts brave the biting wind and frozen toes, pulling on their skates for their annual outing on the world’s largest skating rink – Ottawa’s Rideau Canal.
It’s an incredibly tranquil moment, watching the skaters make their way along the canal, and one of the best places to enjoy this view from is the new Corktown Footbridge.
Plans for the bridge date back to 1984, but there wasn't enough money or support for construction until 2005.
When it finally opened on Sept, 21, 2006, the footbridge provided a place for people to cross the canal, from Somerset Street West in Centretown to the University of Ottawa – something that historically could only be done in the depths of the winter months, across the ice.
The name chosen for the footbridge has deep roots in Ottawa history, back to 1826.
Its graceful white lines, stretching in winter over the sheet of glistening ice, makes it hard to imagine that the area was once home to a grimy, over-crowded and neglected Irish shantytown known as “Corktown.”
Named because most of the Irish immigrant workers living there were from County Cork in Ireland, the neighbourhood’s residents were poor labourers whose lives depended on – and yet were often ended – by their jobs in digging the Rideau Canal – declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2007.
Although there were initially other names considered for the footbridge, most notably the Somerset Footbridge, Corktown was eventually chosen by the naming committee headed by Somerset Ward Coun. Diane Holmes, mostly because it was backed by overwhelming public support.
The footbridge was formally dedicated on Sept. 11, 2007, in a ceremony led by then-mayor Larry O’Brien.
It’s hard to image the suffering of those Irish labourers while standing on the footbridge watching the skaters breeze by, but the Corktown Footbridge stands as a testament that their sacrifices are not forgotten.