Local author Alain Miguelez is crowdfunding online to run a second printing of his book, Transforming Ottawa. The book, first published in November with a print run of 500, is about French landscape architect Jacques Gréber’s famous plan that transformed Ottawa, and its outcomes and effects on the city.
“The idea for the book came when I rediscovered a collection of black and white pictures of every street corner in Ottawa from 1937,” says Miguelez. “They were the pictures that Mr. Gréber requested when he first came to Ottawa.”
Gréber was a renowned urban planner hired by prime minister Mackenzie King to prepare a master plan for Canada’s national capital. His plan, formally announced in 1950 and frequently referred to as the Gréber plan, was implemented over the decades and in many ways shaped Ottawa today.
After his first print run sold out in six weeks, Miguelez is now raising money for a second run of the book to be printed through the crowdfunding website Indiegogo, where people can pre-order the publication.
“The book sold quickly. We got a bunch of copies before Christmas and they were gone before the new year,” says Tanya Williams of Octopus Books. “A lot of people would come in specifically looking for the book, there was a lot of excitement around it. In the first weeks of January, I’ve had a couple calls a day asking about the book. There’s definitely a lot of interest.”
“I think it’s important that people know about Jacques Gréber and his plan. He had a great vision, and made many transformations, although they weren’t liked at the time,” says Margaret Back, secretary at the Historical Society of Ottawa. “I remember I was a student during Jacques Gréber’s announcement of the plan, and I could hear a lot of people talking about it.”
The book contains about 300 high-resolution photos of what Ottawa streets looked like prior to the implementation of the Gréber plan.
These pictures are Miguelez’s favourite part of the book. “They’re so crisp and high-res. You can really catch the detail of a streetlight back then, and the faces of the people. It’s like time travel,” he says.
Miguelez also says he tried to look at the plan as critically as possible. “It has done damage to the city in some ways. For example, Gréber suggested we should get rid of all commercial streets and replace them with shopping malls. Gréber would have said that popular, much loved streets like Bank Street, Montreal Road, Preston Street are in the way of traffic, and suggested they be replaced with malls. It’s a hair-raising proposition to say that today,” says Miguelez.
Miguelez plans to start the second print run around April, and the book can be pre-ordered through Indiegogo, or through local bookstores until then.
Miguelez is an urban planner for City of Ottawa and self-proclaimed amateur historian. In 2004, he published A Theatre Near You: 150 years of going to the show in Ottawa-Gatineau, a history of Ottawa-Gatineau theatres. Transforming Ottawa is his second book.
Miguelez says he hopes Transforming Ottawa will help people gain more knowledge about the history of Ottawa.
“I want to remind people about what was really in the Gréber plan,” he says, “and maybe have us all wake up to the fact that we’ve kept doing things because they’ve become habit and maybe we should look at different approaches.”