Archeologists with trowels will be joining construction workers and their backhoes this spring in LeBreton Flats as the next stage of development at the sprawling downtown property prompts a renewed hunt for Ottawa’s early history.
Condominium builder Claridge Homes has completed two residential projects and has embarked on the third phase of a long-term housing plan for the Flats, but Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird – the federal government’s senior minister for the Ottawa area – recently expressed disappointment with the design of the initial buildings and urged faster progress on developing the area west of Parliament Hill.
As the process of replacing the contaminated soil in the area continues, a few select zones will be receiving special attention from the National Capital Commission, which owns and manages the riverside stretch of land. Those areas have been identified as having high archeological potential and will be monitored by heritage experts during the soil removal process.
LeBreton Flats has long been recognized as a key site in Ottawa history and thus an important target for archeology. Assessments of the archeological potential of the flats were conducted as early as 1991. More than 25 sites have been excavated and documented since 2001.
Those sites are from the 19th and early 20th centuries and have included a school and a hotel as well as low- and high-income homes.
The findings have provided insight into the life and habits of people from all classes who lived in the area during Ottawa’s 19th century transformation from a pioneer lumber village to the nation's capital.
“Our knowledge of the past is usually based on written history,” says Jean-Luc Pilon, curator of Ontario archeology at the Canadian Museum of Civilization.
“But there are vast parts of human behaviour that never get recorded.”
He cited as an example the discovery of drug vials and glass syringes in the latrine of a 19th century hotel during one of the earlier digs at the flats, which shed light on drug use during that period.
During the past decade’s excavations, more than 250,000 artifacts were collected and are now being stored by the City of Ottawa.
Ian Badgley, an archeologist with the NCC, the federal agency that owns the land, says it wants to do more targeted work to complement the artifacts and information already gathered.
“Indiscriminate collecting has no value whatsoever. Without an orientation, you can’t determine the value or the significance of the resources you are recording,” he says.
“We want to represent the Flats as an evolving community, not simply as an industrial site.”
In order to do so, Badgley says the NCC is in discussions with the city about using the artifacts and data collected to do an exhibition telling the story of LeBreton Flats.
Even before that happens, though, the reports of the different excavated sites at LeBreton Flats are in the public domain, and can be requested by anyone through the NCC.
To Badgley, the public should know more about the area what’s been done by archeologists.
Work at the site “is educational,” he says. “If we don’t remember the past developments, then our identity is weakened.”
Connecting with people from the past is also what’s important to Jeff Earl, an Ontario archeologist who has worked at the Flats since the first excavations more than a decade ago.
Every unearthed object “just puts you in touch with people in the past, instead of just reading names on a book, or census,” he says.
He noted that while digging up the foundation of one 19th century house at LeBreton Flats, his crew came across a glass liquor bottle that had been built into a stone wall.
“It was probably hidden there by the mason when he saw his supervisor coming,” he said, speculating about the story behind the stone-encased bottle.
Badgley says that’s what’s powerful about archeological work.
“It’s not the artifact that is important. It’s the person behind the artifact. In this regard, (archeology) honours people from the past.”