Ottawa’s built heritage committee has voted to designate a property that once served as a hospital for wounded soldiers returning from the First World War.
Located in Sandy Hill, 410-412 Besserer Street — built by the famous engineer and inventor Sir Sandford Fleming in 1904 — served as part of The Fleming Convalescent Home from 1917 to 1921. It later served a brief time, as well, as the embassy of the Republic of China.
Now divided into eight residential units, the home has a storied past that’s outlined in a detailed, 45-page report from the city. Before it was converted into a place of healing for returning soldiers who were “physically and mentally unfit,” it was chiefly associated with the multi-talented Fleming, a civil engineer who led construction of the Canadian Pacific Railway, invented standard time and designed Canada’s first postage stamp, the “three-pence beaver.”
“Lots of people are inventive, but he actually took his projects to fruition,” historian and documentary filmmaker Alison Margot Smith said about Fleming, who was born in Scotland in 1827 and died in Ottawa in 1915.
According to the city report, the house was initially built for Sandford Fleming’s son, Hugh, and his wife, Ethel, as a wedding gift. Around the corner, the Fleming family was long settled in a home on Daly Avenue — also known as Winterholme — that was purchased by patriarch Sandford in 1870. The homes on Daly and Besserer were initially connected via a stone wall.
The city report emphasized the Besserer Street home’s Queen Anne Revival style, which, according to Kirsty Walker, a built heritage research coordinator with the city, is the primary architecture style for 11 per cent of all properties listed on the city’s Heritage Register. This works out to be just over 600 properties.
Queen Anne Revival is also the second-most prominent architectural style in Sandy Hill, representing about 27 per cent of the homes in the neighbourhood’s heritage register.
Winterholme was designated a heritage property by the city in 1979, Walker stated in an email to Capital Current.
‘Some parts of society felt as though (convalescent homes) were not going to serve these young men . . . if they got into the habit of having a luxurious, relaxing life, that they might never again return to being workers in the Canadian economy.’
— Kirsty Walker, built hertiage research coordinator, City of Ottawa
In June 1915, in response to the brutality of trench warfare during the 1914-18 war, Canada’s government established the Military Hospital Commission. As part of this effort, convalescent homes were created, utilizing borrowed buildings to provide transitional care for soldiers who’d suffered physical injuries or severe psychological trauma during Canadian troops’ battles against Germany and its allies.
In July 1915, Sir Sandford Fleming — who was knighted in 1897 for his service to Canada and the world — passed away.
Perhaps influenced by Hugh Fleming’s background as a doctor, the couple established Winterholme as a convalescent home in January 1916, making it the first such facility in Ottawa. The Besserer Street house was converted to create an expanded hospital the following year.
“Convalescent homes served as hospitals, spaces for the physically wounded and mentally affected as a space for recuperation, and a vocational training facility,” said the city report. “Especially after the Battle of the Somme, Canadian hospitals and convalescent homes saw an increase in patients from approximately 7,000 around July 1916, to approximately 20,000 in December 1916. Most military hospitals and convalescent homes provided generalized physical and mental health treatment, as well as specialized facilities such as tuberculosis sanitoriums and orthopedic and prosthetic factories.”
However, convalescent homes were not free of controversy. The city’s report on 410-412 Besserer Street stated the MHC initially believed that convalescent homes — unlike cold, sterile hospitals — should be “places for relaxation and rehabilitation, where “the concept of ‘domestic therapy’ of having a familiar, comfortable environment encouraged treatment.”
That objective did not go over particularly well with the public, however, as the homes were often quite lavish for the times since they were provided by wealthier families that had room to share.
“Some parts of society felt as though (convalescent homes) were not going to serve these young men . . . if they got into the habit of having a luxurious, relaxing life, that they might never again return to being workers in the Canadian economy,” said Smith.
So, the MHC quickly introduced vocational programs, which at the time were said to “de-feminize” convalescent homes. These programs included activities such as simple woodworking, motor mechanics, mathematics, and agricultural re-education.
The city’s report pointed out flaws in this viewpoint.
“The MHC’s goal of returned soldiers resuming ‘normal’ life was tied to war time propaganda and contemporary ideas of masculinity and the opinion that men should be independent, hard-working, and support themselves rather than rely on government aid,” it states.
As the city is recognizing the property’s past, it is also considering its future.
It appears the property’s current owner may be planning renovations. A permit for alterations to the building was approved in June 2024. The committee is now recommending that council issue a heritage permit at its next meeting on July 23 to allow the work to proceed.
